A lot can happen in five weeks in politics — more reversals than in a professional wrestling match. But three polls show the GOP and former wrestling coach turned House Speaker Dennis Hastert are sinking in the polls and need a reversal — fast….
Apart from the legal and moral issues involved in the still-raging controversy about former Rep. Mark Foley’s salacious emails to teen pages, the political questions of the day are: what can the GOP do to stem the political bleeding and can it stop the political bleeding. Polls such as these should be cause for concern:
(1) A Fox News poll indicates Hastert could decimate the GOP’s elections hopes:
House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.
“The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,” a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. “And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss.”
Most GOP lawmakers have stood by Hastert, pending a full airing of the facts in his handling of the Mark Foley affair, in which the former Florida representative was caught exchanging salacious messages with teen pages in Congress. The new polling data, however, suggests that many voters already have made up their minds.
The GOP source told FOX News that the internal data had not been widely shared among Republican leaders, but as awareness of it spreads calculations about Hastert’s tenure may change. The source described the pollster who did the survey as “authoritative,” and said once the numbers are presented, it “could change the focus” on whether the speaker remains in power.
(2) A Time poll says the Foley sex scandal is hurting the GOP and that most Americans feel Republicans tried to cover it up:
Two-thirds of Americans aware of the congressional-page sex scandal believe Republican leaders tried to cover it up — and one quarter of them say the affair makes them less likely to vote for G.O.P. candidates in their districts come November. Those are among the findings of a new TIME poll conducted this week among 1,002 randomly-selected voting-age Americans.
The poll suggests the Foley affair may have dented Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in November. Among the registered voters who were polled, 54% said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, compared with 39% who favored the Republican. That margin may be fueled by the rolling scandal over sexually explicit e-mails sent to teenage pages by Republican Representative Mark Foley. Almost 80% of respondents were aware of the scandal, and only 16% approve of the Republicans’ handling of it. Those polled were divided, however, on whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert should resign over his handling of the Foley affair, with 39% saying he should resign and 38% saying he should not.
(3)A Rasmussen poll also shows most Americans feel the GOP has indulged in a cover up — and also that independent voters are particularly turned off:
Sixty-one percent (61%) of American adults believe that Republican leaders have been “protecting [Mark] Foley for several years.� A Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey conducted Tuesday and Wednesday nights shows that only 21% believe that the leadership “just learn[ed] about Foley’s problems last week.�
The data supports speculation that this issue could have a devastating impact on Republican prospects at the polls this fall. Even among Republicans, 31% believe the GOP leadership has been protecting Foley. Just under half (46%) of the GOP faithful believe that Congressional leaders just learned about the problem.
Not surprisingly, Democrats overwhelmingly believe that the Republican leaders have been protecting Foley for years (84% of Democrats hold that view).
Perhaps more significant politically, 69% of those not affiliated with either major party believe that leadership has been protecting Foley. Only 9% of unaffiliated the GOP leaders just learned of the problem last week. How much of an impact this will have on individual Election 2006 races will not be known until our next round of polling is complete.
Hastert has said (so far) that he has no intention of resigning. And he is a big man physically, so it would be difficult for the GOP to throw him overboard.
But if these numbers continue to trend this way (and another big issue could indeed come up to halt this issue’s domination of the news cycle) GOPers may decide they need to hurl him overboard so he lands with a big splash…loud enough for the entire country to see and hear…in the hopes that the boat will stop sinking if it’s a bit lighter..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.