When Joe Scarborough Dragged Dick Armey Out of a Closet of Shame

It was one of those ugly Washington stories that everybody knows about but almost nobody talks about. Joe Scarborough, to his credit, went on the record. In his 2004 Washington memoir, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day, Scarborough provides a chilling portrait of the man who leads FreedomWorks, the organization now promoting brownshirt disruptions at town halls across America.

Before he headed Freedomworks, Dick Armey was House Majority Leader. According to Scarborough, Armey was bereft of common decency, a shameless liar who betrayed his colleagues. Armey worked hard to destroy the career of a young reporter. After that reporter's suicide, Armey helped spread rumors about a gay affair between the reporter and Bill Paxon, a congressman who angled to replace Armey as House Leader. Paxon immediately retired from politics, while Armey stayed on. It seemed like a life-imitates-art reenactment of the 1959 potboiler, Advice and Consent.

If Scarborough was disgusted by Armey, his Republican colleagues seemed unfazed. They kept Armey in his leadership post until 2003. Character is destiny, and Scarborough's portrait of Armey may foreshadow the ugly tactics of the teabagging crowd that attempts to shout down the healthcare debate.

In the book, Scarborough outs himself as the confidential source for Sandy Hume's blockbuster article for The Hill, which recounted the behind-the-scenes drama of an aborted Republican coup. In July 1997, G.O.P House members, including Scarborough, were fed up with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who proved to be incompetent when it came to working with people or getting things done.

The planned putsch by some twenty-odd renegade members failed because of a last-minute betrayal by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who turned on his colleagues after learning that Bill Paxon, not Armey, was designated to succeed Gingrich. Right after The Hill published "Gingrich Foils Coup By Deputies," on July 16, 1997, Sandy Hume became famous. His story got plugged by Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour, by Al Hunt on CNN's Capital Gang, and by Sam Donaldson on This Week. Hume was interviewed by Bernard Shaw on CNN's Inside Politics. Hume's article also elevated the stature of Bill Paxon. As if in lockstep, all the talking heads designated him to be Gingrich's heir apparent. The National Journal did a tally on July 21, 1997:

ABC's Kristol: "For the first time, there is now a credible alternative to Gingrich. .. He is the speaker- in-waiting" ("This Week," ABC, 7/20)... Time's Margaret Carlson: "Paxon's going to be speaker before the '98 elections" ("Late Edition," CNN, 7/20). Time's Mike Duffy: "He can now position himself as an alternative not only to the Speaker, but also to DeLay and Armey" ("Wash. Week," PBS, 7/18). Newsweek's Eleanor Clift: "Now it looks like [the GOP] is operating with the Ken Doll theory of succession: who looks good on TV. And so, Bill Paxon may well be exiled on Elba for a while awaiting a triumphant return." Roll Call's Morton Kondracke: "He's ultimately Speaker material, but I don't think in the short-term he's going to be Speaker. I think they're going to go to somebody else. ... Like Bob Livingston. ... If not Livingston then Kasich." Pat Buchanan: "I think Paxon will run against Newt. ... Paxon is the logical choice to run against Newt, but Newt will ask for one more year and I wouldn't be surprised if they give it to him" ("Group," 7/19).

But, as Scarborough writes, Armey was furious:

Armey was livid at The Hill story and used the next Republican caucus meeting to dismiss The Hill article as "a pack of lies." The denial was ridiculous since, by now, Armey's actions were a well-known secret within the caucus. Sandy Hume's article simply made Armey's mendacious actions known around Washington and around the world. [...] Following The Hill piece, Hume complained that Armey and his staff were doing what they could to harm Hume's career.

In fact, Sandy Hume's career seemed to be thriving. He specialized in "the juicy inside stuff" as he described it to The New York Times. "I can spend all day on the Hill and not know what a single vote is about...Almost everything they vote on is irrelevant to our mission.'" The son of Fox News anchorman Brit Hume was going places. On February 21, 1998, he accepted an offer to join U.S. News & World Report. "He seemed very well connected on a workaday level with the GOP power structure," U.S. News editor James Fallows told The Village Voice, "and for the foreseeable future that was going to be an important story."Later that same evening, according to reporter Andy Humm, Hume showed up at a Republican fundraiser, also attended by Bill Paxon.

But then, writes Scarborough, "Sandy passed away on February 22, 1998, at the age of twenty-eight." The Village Voice reported the details of on Sandy's "passing." At 2:20 a.m. on February 22, 1998, in Bethesda, Maryland, Sandy Hume's BMW was stopped for going 75 mph on a 45 mph zone. Hume was drunk and taken to a police station, where, in a holding cell, he was caught trying to choke himself with a shoelace. At 9:30 a.m., Hume was admitted to the city mental health clinic for psychiatric evaluation. Hume was released later that day, and he returned home, where he shot himself in the head.

"Hume's death represented an opportunity for revenge for some in the Armey camp," writes Scarborough, who recounted a phone inquiry from a Wall Street Journal reporter. "Someone in Dick Armey's office just told me that Sandy got the coup story by having a gay affair with Bill Paxon. Both knew the story was coming out and that's why Paxon resigned and why Sandy killed himself," said the reporter.

The obvious insinuation was that Sandy Hume killed himself because he was mortified at suffering the kind of fate borne by Monica Lewinsky, whose affair with Bill Clinton had been first reported one month earlier. Hume frequently appeared on Fox News, an outfit obsessed with the politics of personal destruction.

Two days before Hume's suicide, Bill Paxon contacted dozens of members to prepare a bid to oust Armey as Majority Leader. "House Republican renegades have issued a stern warning to Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) about influencing leadership elections: Fight for Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) at your own risk," wrote Sandy Hume in The Hill just before Paxon started calling. George magazine had commissioned a lengthy profile on Paxon, written by Sandy Hume.

Two days after Hume's death, Paxon, 44, retired from politics. He announced, "I will never run for office again. Never. Not even for dog warden." Scarborourgh recounts how he felt when the Journal reporter called:

I sat at my desk, rage growing by the second toward this reporter, Dick Armey, and the sleazy business of politics. For the first time since the coup began, I measured my words and held my anger. "I don't know who Sandy slept with and I don't care. But I do know Sandy didn't get it by having sex with Bill Paxon. Sandy got it by eating ribs in Shirlington with my ten-year-old son and me. I told Sandy everything about the coup from the beginning to end to show everybody what rally happened. Bill Paxon didn't give Sandy the story. I did."

Scarborough's candor helped keep Armey's narrative out of the press.

She and most other Washington reporters ignored the story that spread around the Capitol like a virus. Dee Dee Myers would tell me at Sandy's funeral that the slur against Hume was the single most disgusting thing she had ever encountered in politics. Those around us nodded in agreement that while winning in Washington was always a blood sport, the slur on Sandy was more like a political terrorist attack. And in this tragedy the collateral damage was not the reputation of the intended target. Everyone knew Armey's staff was lying. Instead, it was Sandy's family and friends who had to endure the unspeakable savagery of the attack.

It's a chilling parable, though one detail makes no sense. Why would Armey's people spread the story after Bill Paxon wrote his own political obituary? At that point, Armey had prevailed. By encouraging further talk about the matter, Armey was impeding Job 1 of the G.O.P. and the Washington media: Obsess about Monica Lewinsky all the time. Is there any chance that Scarborough got his chronology wrong? That perhaps Armey's people were spreading the story of a gay affair before Paxon decided to stop running for House Leader and permanently withdraw from politics?

Is it possible the mere rumor of a gay affair invoked such dread and fear in someone so invested in being a G.O.P. insider? Only two things seem certain. Sandy Hume can't speak for himself, and no one in the GOP leadership took Sandy Hume's suicide as a wake-up call to temper the viciousness of their personal attacks. No one, especially at Fox News, ever asked, "Is it possible that if we had no been so relentlessly mean-spirited in attacking the foibles of others, that Brit Hume might still have a son?"

After leaving Congress, Paxon addressed the gay rumors. He said they came from Democrats. Paxon's wife, former Staten Island congresswoman Susan Molinari, explained why they were easy targets."[B]ecause Bill was 40 when we were married and hadn't been married before, the rumors were I was gay and he was gay," she said. [New York Daily News, January 29, 1999]

Dick Armey appears regularly on Fox News with Neil Cavuto.

Comments

[MinerSam]

Thank you.
You are one of the very voices I trust on the Internet.
And this comes only because I have challanged myself to be highly informed over a lifetime.
Dick Armey is one of those who repeatedly trashed Bill Clinton...

When Bill Clinton began to run the Republicans came to see him, They warned him that they were sure they will win simply by saying that all the other Democratic candidates are "Too liberal." But not with him. So that if he dares to run they will destrou him.

They then spent 70M of tax payer dollars going ON A FISHING EXPEDITION and after him, Hillary and their aids over COUNTLESS things they WERE FOUND INNOCENT OF...which even the newspapers put on page 78, as our entire Main Stream Media (which betrayes the voters every day) obsessed about Bill;s dishonesty about his betrayel of Hillery...WHICH SHE FOREGAVE HIM FOR.

They Republicans have been holding our country hostage since Nixon's men broke into Democratic headquarters...And Reagan who slept evey afternoon. EXPRESSED HATRES FOR **OUR** Government...the one way pay to protect our interests not betrayous (as in under the Republicans)

[cloudminder]

why didn't Brit Hume take this on as his fight

if what you say is true in the first couple of paragraphs

Mr. Hume needs to explain why he did not fight back

and why he continued working for FOX news

and why his wife continued to work for FOX news

FOX news gave Dick Armey a forum

your piece has to address this issue, or I don't think it is worth it to write about it

[jade7243]

Britt Hume cannot explain anything. He died of pancreatic cancer last year.

[JRsNana]

Are you sure about that? Got a link?

[PeterPiperPicked]

Brit Hume is most assuredly alive. Tony snow dies last year.

[MinerSam]

Because Britt Hume is just another Republican from the lower levels of hell.

And he proves one thing:

That "demeanor" is NO INDICATOR of honest versus evil....which these days far to many people are DELUSIONABLE ABOUT. They think they can tell fact from fiction, the good from the bad
the honest from the evil simply by the person's tone etc.

The only way you can tell fact from fiction is to BE WELL INFORMED.
This is very difficult in sea of lies and the Republican perpetrators.

And while at best some Republicans suffer from delusion too.. For the most part if you watch them operate over time on C-SPAN every day... you will see what beasts they really are.

[ccoppe]

This is a frightening illumination of how evil these Republican power brokers are. . . . .

Wake up people!

[lagumbo]

These power hungry fools will kill each other for their power. So you know they will screw the citizens of this country , without batting an eye. So what else is new?

[zest]

Thanks for this information, very enlightening.

[jhw22]

I think the rabble rousers at the town hall meetings should be called the dick army.

Jennifer

[maggienash65]

I agree. It is sad this country has come to this type of behavior. Scarborough loves it, it is bringing down the President.

[maggienash65]

How did I guess????? Tell the truth and you get slammed, about like those town hall meetings!!!!

[Artos]

That's good, I was going to suggest that myself. Only you have to give it more power when you do this as in "The Dick Army". I would capitalize the whole thing but that would be too overpowering.

[MinerSam]

Those Town Hall pepole are as much the VICTIMs of Republicans liars as Democrats and others "carers."

They are THE ** BRAINWASHED PRODUCTS*** OF REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA. USED by them for decades. The Republican army of the uninformed ...most vulnerable to disinformation .....coupled with THE ONLY REPUBLICAN SKILL.

They are BRAINEWASHED Kansans voting against their economic interests.

For far too long the MEDIA SAVVY Republicans have used DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING TO SELL THEIR **DEFECTIVE** PRODUCTS.

..Tragically Coupled/W Democrats equating Media Management with deceptions....THEIR BIGGEST FAILURE.

Town Hall screamings are evidence of the POWER OF INFORMATION PIPELINES. OURS ARE POISONED....Which Goebbles already taught us.

Without information nobody who can form opionions!...And AMERICANS ARE NOT PSYCHIC.

While the highly overpaid **No Nuance* Talking Heads (SPUN SPINNERS) insult the meaning
of Pundit.

And While the MSNBCers like Rachel and Ed...inform about the evil Republican Infrastructure...

How come HARDLY A WORD ABOUT THE **FACTS, NAUNACES, APPRORIATE WIEGHT*** on Obama's vision for Healthcare. Or anything else.

While Obama makes precise/ brilliant speaches HOW MANY KNOW...

===Obama's 5 Categories of Guantanamo detainee Dilemnas!
===Part of reform is paying for more Primary Care physicians.
===Reason Infrastructure Stimilous took longer IS LOCALITIES HAD TO GO OUT FOR BIDS.

You won't find such pertienet facts on CNN but EVEN ON MSNBC... and I'm sick of left repetition of "single payer, single payer" to the music of Twilight Zone...versus informed responding to the Republican lies. They do shut up when you do.

[Raphi]

Ah yes, Dick Armey...with THAT name he exploits homophobia?!!
Same guy who got the backing for the teabaggers. (another, um. interesting name...)

But it is deadly serious. Read the neocon philosophers. They have no respect for average working people, whom they see as ignorant rabble. To be manipulated for the greater good. Including using religion as a way to keep people obedient. They don't respect faith, either.

For the neocons, the world is divided into their side and everyone else-- the enemy; to be defeated by any means necessary. The ends do justify the means. Lies and betrayal, or whipping up fear to support war or defeat much needed healthcare, are merely tactics. Power is everything. And power should be in the hands of an elite. For whom any disagreement is seen as dangerous deviation to be eliminated. A secular Inquisition with the modern implements of well-funded propaganda.

[doneflyin]

Dick Armey--further proof as if we needed it, that uber conservative Republicans are just plain mean.

[jsgaetano]

It never fails to amuse me how these people spend all day, every day being engaged in the politics of hate... but then get "appalled" and "shocked" when the people on "their team" start using the same tactics against other Republicans.

It's outright hypocrisy. They cheerlead when those tactics are used against liberals and Democrats, but fluff up their righteous indignation when the roosters come home to roost... like they are somehow better than everyone else.

[Artos]

Look where a lot of the worst of their kind originate from, the South, and especially from Texas, where Big egos are a way of life. Isn't that where we got Bush, Rove and a lot of the other power mongers from.

[DamianLA]

I was working on the Hill when that happened, and nobody was surprised when that bitch Susan Molinari tried to blame her own parties actions on Democrats.

It was good riddance to a bunch of white trash - including Joe.

[chaz]

Sorry I watch morning republican joe most days on msnbc and my experience has been that joe is not better than Gingrich, Army or any other corporate shill.

[cecebo]

Maybe, but I appreciate that one shining moment when he schooled that journalist and had the courage to float the truth.

[chaz]

Please, he throws out a bone every blue moon and then claims to be nonpartisan. That's his game. That's all part of his superiority complex and obviously you have reinforced his ego.

[GreatNews27]

Score another one for Texas.

[ESerafina42]

And yet Brit Hume remained a Faux News right-wing tool until his retirement. Sad.

[cloudminder]

and Brit's wife worked there too as an executive

[Shawn0965]

I know there are people on here who are far better writers than I am.

So will one of you please put into words just how big a WHORE you have to be, to become a shill for the political party that destroyed your son, and was willing to keep slandering him even after he commited suicide?

[Estreet1964]

You put it into words very well. I never had much regard for Brit Hume to begin with. But now.......

What a pathetic toady.

[BlueFloyd]

bingo! you said it the best!

[BarryS]

and so if he were gay? oh yes homophobic repugs would revolt. so sad.