With a little help from his friends…
Yup. If he doesn’t resign, he’ll get fired from the speaker gig. Hoping for a good fight, and a GoP meltdown…
I’m sure there’s some serious arm-twisting going on behind the GOP scenes right now. Hastert will resign within a week.
Foley has to be one of the biggest idiots ever for doing what he did. Nevertheless, as soon as it all broke he didn’t initially proclaim innocence, string it out and then resign after his position became untennable (like so many others have).
Hastert, on the other hand, is an even bigger idiot. He can’t see that this isn’t going away and he is trying to save himself. He’s doomed, too stupid to see it and won’t cut his losses. He’s going to choke on his own vomit.
Actually, he did try to weasel out of it. He knew that ABC had the emails, and tried to write them off as “overly friendly” communications. ABC then produced the IM’s, and Foley folded. Don’t give him credit he doesn’t deserve.
At the moment, the thread right below this one is titled: “Help me use a chainsaw correctly”.
Bush came out today in support of Hastert.
Usually, that means the guy is toast. However, in this administration, normal rules need not apply…
You know that the pesky Liberal media will say anything to discredit Republicans 
Blissful sigh
They were talking about this on NBC last night. The thought amongst the republicans seems to be that if Hastert resigns, it would magnify the scandal. I think that’s true to a point. If he resigned, it would be a major media event and the story would stay in the news for a little while longer. On the other hand, if Hastert resigned the republicans could say that all parties involved had been punished and they could try to move on.
I think there’s a kernel of truth in each of the arguments Harborwolf referred to. But it seems to me there isn’t just handwriting on the wall, there’s flashing neon lights surrounded by strobes saying “Hastert cannot continue as Speaker”. What is going to devastate the Republicans isn’t the actions of Foley, it’s the continued denial by Hastert that he knew about it for years. If the investigation reveals this not to be true, then the Republicans are going to have to pay for Hastert’s stubbornness.
I think Hastert is simply praying that something else will happen to dominate the news.
Where is a runaway bride when you need one?
And now Hastert’s waited too long; Foley’s used up all the good excuses. Hastert will be stuck with, “um…the dog ate my…integrity.”
Yeah, :rolleyes:
I’m no Republican, but this whole “scandal” is such obvious posturing and mock outrage it makes me physically ill.
They’ve shown Hastert knew about the NON-SEXUAL emails, to my knowledge no one has shown he knew anything about the IMs until ABC got them.
And of course it’s HORRIBLE that a Congressman traded explicit IMs with a page, but actually fucking one in the ass is okay. Oh but that was 20 years ago! Because that means something? If anything social acceptance of homosexuality has grown in that time. But it was consensual! Oh, I guess that training I got in sexual harassment about there being no such thing as consensual sex when one person holds all the power was bullshit.
Foley is a despicable piece of shit but let’s not hang the entire Republican Party over behavior that only offends those of the opposite political party when it is convenient for them.
Oddly enough, all the Republicans I know are offended by the entire Republican Party because their brain-dead supporters (Rush, Drudge, etc.) keep waving around completely unrelated incidents of other scandals – as if that makes this scandal any less despicable.
Oooh! Other congressmen once had sex with pages! Bill Clinton got a BJ in the Oval Office! Look! Ninjas!
Foley harassed minors who were working for Congress, and in so doing he violated a law that he passed. Hasturt knew that Foley had questionable contact with a minor, so much so that the minor’s parents had been involved – and Hasturt did nothing. And there’s no point in addressing scandals and events that have no bearing on what is going on now.
What really gets my goat is suggestions thatthat Democrats somehow planned all this scandal. Please. No matter how the Republican spinmasters and talking points try, no one in this country is going to believe that the Democrats managed to get their sh*t together to do anything effective. We’ve all seen how effective they’ve been over the last 6 years.
It ain’t over until the fat [del]lady[/del] man sings.
Um, ah, it ain’t over until the fat man sings well !
The nonsexual emails:
- Involved a grown man asking a teenager for his photograph (would YOU ask a teenager you weren’t related to for a photograph?)
- In a way that really creeped out the teenager,
- and referenced a second teenager who had also been hit on by the grown man,
- and referenced a third teenager who had warned the first one about the grown man.
Hastert knew about all of that. He didn’t:
-Call law enforcement,
-Talk to the folks who headed up the page program, or even
-Talk to the teenagers.
Instead, he called the grown man, got his story, and left it at that.
Thirty three, but who’s counting? (It was revealed 23 years ago).
Uh, yeah, it was bullshit. Nonconsensual sex is rape, not sexual harassment. If that’s actually the training you got, the trainers should be fired.
Daniel
Leave me out of this! I never even hit on teenage boys when I was a teenage girl!
Have you read those “non-sexual” emails? Citizensforethics.org has them online, and while it’s true that they are non-sexual, it’s also true that they are very very very creepy, as the response of one of the pages shows: “sick sick sick sick sick”.
Gerry Studds was censured by the House in a vote 420-3. The Democratic leadership did not ignore potentially incriminating evidence with Stubbs; when the revelation of sexual transgression came to light, they joined the Republicans in the censure vote.
I don’t know of anybody trying to hang the entire Republican party. It’s the Republican leadership that is going to hang, and rightly so. This is hardly the worst of their sins, but if their lack of scrutiny over their own sexual predators is finally what takes them down, then so be it.
And on preview, Dorkness once again describes everything best.