The photo George Bush and Denny Hastert hope you’ll never see: Mark Foley applauds as George Bush signs the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (credit: Tim Sloan/Agence France Presse)Denny Hastert’s swillin’ a whole lotta hogwash regarding the Foley Pagegate scandal. He expects us to believe that e mail messages which he acknowledges “raised a red flag” for the page who received them and his parents (not to mention the Louisiana Republican Congressman who reported the messages to his leadership and Rep. Thomas Reynolds who reported them to Hastert) caused barely a ripple in House Republican leadership circles. Hastert admits they were a red flag, yet is satisfied the Republicans did all they could and should have when they told a sexual predator politely to knock it off and trusted his word that he would. Listen to these feeble protestations:
Neither Hastert nor any other Republican leaders were aware of an alleged sexually explicit instant message exchange between Foley and another page until it was revealed by ABC News…
“No one was ever made aware of any sexually explicit e-mail or text messages at any time,” Hastert’s office said.
So you have a fellow member of the House leadership whose behavior “raises a red flag” and you don’t have even the faintest curiosity as to whether or not this person will honor his word and stop behavior potentially damaging to your Party and its majority? What does Hastert take us for? Dimwits. There are a myriad of options he had to monitor Foley’s behavior after he found out about it. He should’ve availed himself of at least one of them to learn more about what Foley had already done and what he might do in the future. The fact that he didn’t speaks volumes about his real qualities as a leader.
The Republicans ought to sack every person who knew about this and did nothing to monitor and stop it including Hastert and Reynolds. But I hope they won’t do this because this looks like an albatross that might sink Republican chances to hold on to the House come November.
What’s sad is – Americans should be as (or more ) concerned about the war in Iraq, the loss of our civil liberties, etc etc as a sex scandal (although clearly this is just another symptom of an amazingly corrupt system).
What concerns me most about this – CREW forwarded a copy of those email to the FBI last February and they never did even a preliminary investigation. The only believable explaination is some political operative quashed an investigation.
When news came out the Bill Clinton had a consensual affair with an adult women – we heard nothing else from the news media for many months. Many of the same Republicans who voted to impeach Clinton for lying about it (we were told over and over again – it was the lie, not the act) clearly were now involved in a coverup.
Denny Hastert was a former high school teacher and sports coach. I can’t believe that he wouldn’t know the warning signs of a sexual predator – and those early emails he now admits having been given copies of – can AT BEST be described as something warranting further investigation. The fact that they were withheld from the Democratic representative of the Page oversight comittee (or whtaever it’s called) shows clear evidence of a coverup.
There’s no doubt that the Republican party cares more about retaining power than protecting minor children in their care.
How any decent person can vote in any way to allow this party to retain its power in November boggles the mind.