Rachel Maddow: National Republican Senatorial Committee Knew About Ensign's Affair Back in 2008
By Heather Tuesday Aug 04, 2009 5:45pm
Rachel reports on the lastest information on the John Ensign affair from the Las Vegas Sun: Emails between Ensign NRSC lieutenants, Hamptons show affair was known inside organization more than a year ago. Those emails can be read here and here.
Now, who is responsible for the Republican Party‘s fiasco in the Senate in the 2008 election? Who was in charge of the Republican Party‘s efforts to hold on to its seats in the Senate, efforts that failed so epically?
Hey, it was Sen. John Ensign of Nevada. He was in charge of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for 2007 and 2008. That‘s the campaign arm of the Republican Party responsible for the Senate.
While he was supposedly getting busy then overseeing the run-up to his party‘s 2008 shellacking in the Senate, you may recall he was also getting busy with one of his staffers, putting her son on the NRSC payroll, finding jobs for her husband, and asking his own parents to give financial gifts, lots of them, to his mistress‘s family. That‘s a lot to do while you‘re trying to get folks elected to the U.S. Senate. I wonder if he‘s a good multi-tasker.
Well, tonight there is new evidence that Sen. Ensign was not the only one at the National Republican Senatorial Committee who might have been distracted by his extramarital affair while preparing for that ill-fated election.
