As mentioned earlier, Republican Dennis Hastert is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also the guy who failed to act when it became apparent (over a year ago) that (now ex) Republican Congressman Mark Foley was sending inappropriate emails/IM messages to underage male Pages.
An update on him. Republican pollsters have leaked the results of an internal poll to FoxNews that basically indicates that, if Hastert does not step down, the GOP could lose between 20 and 50 house seats, enough to flip that chamber to the Democrats. So far, Hastert is standing tough, but the results of this poll "could change the focus" on whether the speaker remains in power.
In other (bad) news for the GOP, Conservative Pollster Scott Rasmussen has new poll results showing that 61% of Americans Believe Republican Leaders Have Been Protecting Foley, including 46 per cent of Republicans.
Finally, the other shoe is ready to drop in the form of The List, a list of gay Republican staffers who allegedly helped Mark Foley get away with his dirty deeds. In other words, the Democrats seem willing to out gay Republicans with connections to Foley in order to drive a wedge between the GOP and its Evangelical base.
Nasty nasty stuff. And weird too. Republicans bungle a couple of wars to the tune of half a trillion $, but are done in (maybe) by a sex scandal.
Great coverage, BCL.
ReplyDeleteThis is no surprise though. Those Republicans are some nasty pieces of work.
Mixed feelings about the forced outings, I have to say. The ends don't justify the means for something like that. But in a general sense I think there may be something to be said that all gays benefit by having conservatives realize that people they work with, like, befriend, even love (non-sexually) and think of as family can be gay too. I.e. show them just how normal it is to be gay.
I think there are a few people in Ottawa who could do with a good outing too, in fact.