Some conservatives are refusing to follow the GOP lines on the scandal involving resigned Republican Rep. Mark Foley’s inappropriate and sometimes graphic email exchanges with an underage teen page — and they’re calling on House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert to resign.
And one of the names is a big name in GOP circles:
“Speaker Hastert had knowledge of Congressman Foley’s inappropriate behavior and chose to protect a potential pedophile and powerful colleague over a congressional page,� said David Bossie, president of conservative advocacy group Citizens United.
“This inaction demonstrates a lack of leadership on Speaker Hastert’s part, and calls into question both his judgment and character. If Speaker Hastert was willing to sacrifice a child to protect Rep. Foley’s seat and his own leadership position, then he surely does not share our American and conservative values,� says Mr. Bossie. …
Michael Reagan, nationally syndicated radio show host and chairman of Citizens United’s Faith and Family Project, is also calling for resignations. “Any member of Congress who was aware of the sexual emails and protected the congressman should also resign effective immediately. I was sexually abused by a day camp counselor at age eight and also made to be part of child pornography,� Mr. Reagan stated.
What remains damning is this: apparently no Democrats knew of these allegations and the problems with the emails, only Republican leaders…who kept it under wraps.
Here’s some of what Hastert has said to defend himself against growing condemnations from some Republicans as well as Democrats and just plain-old Americans who don’t belong to any political party:
House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Monday defended his office’s handling of questions raised about Rep. Mark Foley last year, saying the parents of a former male page were concerned about an e-mail Foley sent their son but didn’t want the matter pursued.
Hastert said neither he nor other GOP leaders were aware until last Friday of far more lurid computer exchanges two years earlier between the Florida Republican and another page.
Hastert, R-Ill., acknowledged that Foley’s 2005 e-mail to a Louisiana boy seeking a photograph raised a “red flag” with the Louisiana congressman who sponsored the page, but he said his staff aides and Rep. John Shimkus, another Illinois Republican who chairs a board of House members who oversee the page program, did not know the contents.
The big problem for Hastert and the GOP party elite (and talking heads) who are battling this new crisis by saying they didn’t know that much, Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica, Democrats had affairs with pages & interns and gay scandals before, etc.: it may NOT be selling well with social conservatives and “soccer moms” who may not feel that Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica, Democrats’ problems with pages and gay scandals, etc. negate or mitigate the fact that (a) this occurred and (b) little was done about in terms of calling in law enforcement to investigate.
As the scandal over former Rep. Mark Foley has expanded to entwine Republican leaders who knew of his suggestive emails to underage male House pages, the party has new reason to worry about two key constituencies: Christian conservatives and suburban soccer moms.
Long before the disclosure of the Foley emails last week and the six-term Florida Re-publican’s resignation, Republicans were fretful that many conservatives would stay home on Election Day, turned off by high spending, illegal immigration and inaction on a number of social issues. Moderate suburbanites, meanwhile, complain of a party agenda that is too conservative on issues such as support for medical research using embryonic stem cells, which President Bush vetoed.
Now the Foley fallout has united both Republican voter groups in anger, just five weeks before midterm elections that will determine whether the party holds its House and Senate majorities.
“It’s one of the worst congressional scandals ever. A top House Republican who denounced sex predators as ‘animals’ stands accused of acting like one,” Cliff Kincaid, editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media report, wrote yesterday in an online editorial circulated by the pro-Republican Web site GOPUSA.com. His headline reflected an ire that went beyond Mr. Foley to include House Republican leaders who say they knew of complaints about him. “Who Protected the Perverted Congressman?” it read.
“I think there’s more pain to come” for Republicans, says party pollster Tony Fabrizio. With clients among House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates, in places such as suburban Philadelphia and swing-state Minnesota, he adds, “I’m very much watching how these things play out.”
Apparently these groups — prominent people such as Michael Reagan and Bay Buchanan — don’t agree with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow that Foley’s messages were “simply naughty” emails.
And there could be political consequences, if this story has “legs” and isn’t kicked off the front pages by an even bigger leg. ABC News:
In a twist on the old Watergate question, the Republican Party is struggling to answer: What did GOP leaders know of a congressman’s salacious exchanges with underage male pages and when did they know it?
The truth could determine not only their own political futures but also whether the party can recover from the scandal surrounding former Republican Rep. Mark Foley and manage to remain in power after Nov. 7.
“I don’t think this is so much about Foley as it is about the handling of this,” Rick Davis, a Republican strategist, said Monday as the drama rocked the House GOP five weeks before midterm elections, much to Democrats’ delight.
The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial which in part says this:
When it came to light months ago that Mr. Foley in 2005 sent an “overfriendly” e-mail to a 16-year-old boy who was a former House page, or messenger, Republicans handled the boy’s complaint internally and quietly. The House clerk and the GOP congressman in charge of the House Page Board instructed Foley to cease the communication. Neither the bipartisan Page Board nor the Ethics Committee was informed. Unbelievably Foley stayed on as co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus.
House leaders say they didn’t know about earlier sexually explicit Internet and cellphone communications to former pages until last week. Now, after a request from GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois on Sunday, the FBI is investigating.
But why didn’t alarm bells go off, even from an “overfriendly” e-mail? Internet sexual solicitation is a huge concern of parents. Those who send their high schoolers to the selective page program don’t expect them to become sexual targets for lawmakers. A little digging would have turned up the earlier e-mails, which circulated among former pages.
Over the years, sexual scandal has tarred elected officials in both parties, and so has financial impropriety. Yet this year’s been a doozy for Republicans, with three ethics-related House resignations so far. Last month, the House could only muster a very weak rule change aimed at pork-barrel spending. The Senate has yet to adopt a bill allowing for easily viewed and promptly disclosed campaign donations. Last month, however, the president did sign a law to make public a database of federal grants, contracts, and loans.
A few months ago, Speaker Hastert complained that an FBI raid on a Democrat’s office (after cash was found in his home freezer) violated congressional independence. Now he’s encouraging the FBI to look at lawmakers who may have known about the Foley communications. Has he just woken up to what’s clear to the nation – that Congress seems incapable of reforming itself?
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.