Fear and Loathing In the GOP

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601414.html

Fear and Loathing In the GOP

By Byron York
Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page B01

Even in the grand tradition of scapegoating in American politics, J. Dennis Hastert's current plight stands out. The former high school coach-turned-accidental speaker of the House spent last week as the unlikeliest of fall guys for a sex scandal that involved a closeted gay Republican congressman, underage male House pages and unseemly instant messages. As fear and loathing spread through panicky preelection Republicans, Hastert looked like a goner, then a survivor, then a goner again and then, well, who knows.

"I was inclined at first to believe that Denny Hastert should resign," conservative activist Paul Weyrich told me on Wednesday.

But then Weyrich heard from Hastert, in one of the dozens of calls the speaker made last week. ("He called me, I didn't call him," Weyrich stressed.) Hastert explained that he hadn't known about Foley's graphic sex talk with a teenage House page. And the speaker argued passionately, Weyrich said, that he had properly handled the so-called "overly friendly" e-mail from Foley to another former page. Ultimately, Weyrich was convinced. He would not call for Hastert's resignation.

Hastert's defense strategy has worked -- so far. But the Foley affair has exposed deep fissures within the GOP a few weeks before midterm elections; when the story broke, everyone seemed to be in a different place. Some are in what one top House aide calls the "knee-jerk" camp -- those who called for Hastert's resignation right away. Others are in a camp awaiting more evidence. Still others are in the smell-a-rat camp, suspecting that Democrats were behind the whole thing. And finally, some are in the this-is-proof-of-America's-moral- decline camp, condemning Republican and Democratic leaders alike. No one camp was able to take control, thus allowing Hastert to continue as the longest-serving Republican speaker in history.

.......

[Eric J in MN]

1. The Washington Post lets Byron York repeatedly refer

to Democrats as rats in that article.

"smell-a-rat"

I doubt that the Washington Post would let a liberal repeatedly refer to Republicans as rats.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. In this instance I don't think it hurts us.

Let the public see what those guys are like. Let the public see them resort to name-calling and increasingly desperate efforts to shift responsibility for their own dungheap.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Every minute those creeps keep this story alive costs them another 3 votes.