Internal Polling Suggests Hastert Could Devastate GOP

Gold - let me point out that I'm not a Republican. I'm a registered independent and I vote for the person and not the party.

I think you missed my point that I would not be for Hastert stepping aside because I'm against "gotcha" politics. The timing of everything here reeks of gotcha politics.

I do see the issue that you raise but if you are an incumbent and you need Hastert's support to win your own district - then you don't deserve to be re-elected. That's why I don't see a true connection (even though I'm sure the media will play up a connection).

As Tip O'Neill was fond of saying, "all politics are local." Hastert won't be local to anyone except the neighboring districts in his home state.

 

IIRC, Hastert was informed that Foley was being too friendly and creeping out the pages. He was told of e-mails, which the FBI saw and were not concerned about. Hastert sent Shimkus to tell Foley in no uncertain terms to knock it off. How would O'Neill have acted differently?

 

I can tell you for a fact, and from personal experience, that Tip O'Neill could do that very thing because, while he was a brilliant legislative tactician, there were certain gaps in his, ah, life experience into which the case of Gerry Studds squarely fell. (This is the chap, after all, who, when Barney Frank admitted he was gay, told friends that he heard that "Barney was coming out of the room.") I can also tell you for a fact that, in the 1970's and 1980's, Studds was very severely closeted himself. Rumors, that's all. The fact remains that, when the facts of Studds' misbehavior came to his desk, O'Neill acted, decisively, and brought the entire institutional weight of the House down on him. He did not temporize. He did not hand it off to the national congresskional campaign. He did not freeze out the opposition. He acted, perhaps not as decisively as you would have liked him to, but certainly, quicker and more definitively than Hastert did.
And he never called a press conference and blamed the media or the Republicans or the pages themselves for setting Studds up.

 

So O'Neill was clueless to the real world?

So the best O'Neill could do is censure a pederast?

Correct me if I'm wrong but Foley had to resign. That's more punishment than Studds ever received and he's the one who actually consumated the act with an underage page.

Keep living in a world of dual standards.

 

I also find it amusing that sportswriters who completely turned a blind eye to steroids in baseball in the 90's, cocaine in baseball in the 80's and rampant thug behavior in college football since the dawn of time want to get a guy fired from a job because in their eyes he didn't act on information he had quick enough.

It is almost as amusing as the folks who decry the publics fascination with this subject yet find the time to read and write posts on a thread on the same subject.

 

On the subject what were then the frontiers of human sexuality and its practical applications in the political sphere, Tip O'Neill was very much "clueless.' It should be absolutely no surprise to anyone that he was. He was of a different time, generation, and ethnic and religious upbringing. Add to that his native political caution -- he did turn against Vietnam late, and he held off on the Nixon impeachment until he could bring a bipartisan vote home on the Judiciary Committee -- and his performance in the Studds matter was less surrising still.
And I know you're too smart to imply that Hastert forced Foley to resign. ABC went to Foley. His COS tried to cut a deal in which the IMs would not come to light. ABC said phooey, and Foley resigned. That's the timeline. Or, as Hastert said on Monday in his first statement on the matter after Foley's resignation:

"The instant messages, reportedly between Congressman Foley and a former page sent in 2003, are vile and repulsive to me, and to my colleagues. No one in the Republican Leadership, nor Congressman Shimkus, saw those messages until last Friday when ABC News released them to the public. When they were released, Congressman Foley resigned. And I'm glad he did, if he had not, I would have demanded his expulsion from the House of Representatives."

Sure, you would have.

 

And I know that you are too smart to think that the timing of all this is a coincidence.

 

If you have an ounce of proof that it isn't coincidental, I'd sure like to hear it. ABC says it isn't a set-up. Fordham says it isn't. The only people saying that it is are Mehlman, who has (ah) reasons of his own to be wary of parts of this story, Enron Ed Gillespie, and a drug-addled promiscuous sex tourist with his own radio program.

 

Do you have any proof that Hastert would not have demanded Foley's expulsion from the House of Representatives? No you don't.

You just sit in judgement of others like a elitist son of a bitch?

Drug addled sex tourist? Do you mean Al Franken? He was a coke head back at the SNL days.

You are good at calling people names but that doesn't pass for debate no matter what the MSM or Democratic Play Book says. How many posts can you go without calling someone a smug insulting name?

 

Deep_Douchebag posts something that most might think is BS?

Well, knock me over with a feather!

 

Bush was re-elected.

How much more could a country be doomed?

 

Chris, once again, I'll try to keep it civil here. When has Hastert ever given a damn about "the gay rights folks"? Doesn't he support an ammendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a federal ban on gay marriage? What does he have to lose by pissing off "gay rights" people. If anything, this would only bolster his conservative credentials and make him stronger within the party. Am I missing something?