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House Speaker Hastert Should Stay NewsMax.com Critics are calling for Rep. Dennis Hastert to step down as Speaker of the House over his handling of the Rep. Mark Foley affair. NewsMax strongly disagrees with that sentiment.
The Washington Times, a conservative voice in the nation's capital, has joined some Democrats in criticizing the Illinois Republican for not doing enough to investigate questions about Foley's e-mail exchanges with a former House page. Hastert must "resign his speakership at once," the Times demanded in a lead editorial published Tuesday.
But while we have disagreed with Hastert over Congressional spending practices, we feel that in the Foley matter he has done nothing that can be construed as malfeasance.
The fact is, the Republican leadership took swift action when Foley's salacious communications via instant messages became known just last week. Story Continues Below
Last year the Republicans became aware of e-mails Foley exchanged in 2005, but determined that while they were "over friendly," they did not include overtly sexual references.
House Republicans asked Foley to stop making contact with the pages and he said he would.
It is important to note that several media outlets also learned about the same e-mails the House Republicans learned of last year. But these media outlets deemed them too innocuous to merit coverage. The St. Petersburg Times, for instance, decided the e-mails were nothing more than "friendly chit-chat."
It is clear that Hastert and the Republican leadership did not ignore this matter, as minor as it seemed to the media outlets. They instructed Foley to cease communicating with the teenage page.
It wasn't until last Friday – just weeks before the election that Florida Republican Foley was expected to win – that an unknown person provided ABC News with instant messages Foley had exchanged with another teenage page in 2003. Those messages, unlike the e-mails, did contain salacious sexual talk.
Upon hearing of ABC's instant messages, Foley resigned.
Hastert issued a statement on Monday that declared: "The instant messages, reportedly between Congressman Foley and a former page sent in 2003, are vile and repulsive to me, and to my colleagues. No one in the Republican leadership, not [Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who chairs a board of House members overseeing the page program], saw those messages until last Friday when ABC News released them to the public. When they were released, Congressman Foley resigned. And I'm glad he did; if he had not, I would have demanded his expulsion from the House of Representatives."
Hastert also asked for an investigation to determine if Foley violated any federal laws, and asked Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to determine what state laws were broken.
It is clear, then, that Hastert has acted appropriately, and that the only culprit is Foley himself, who deceived the Republican leadership – and the nation – by adopting a strong public stance against pornography and child exploitation.
Foley was one of Congress' foremost opponents of child pornography, and chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. He also sponsored legislation to change federal sex offender laws.
We also feel there could likely be an untold story behind the sudden revelation of the instant messages so close to Election Day – a story involving Democratic attempts to torpedo the campaign of a Republican almost assured of victory in November. Already Democratic candidates are using the Foley case to buttress their campaigns for Senate and House seats all across the country. How convenient.
Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience that the Democrats' handwringing over the Foley scandal is part of a carefully coordinated attack designed to help the Democrats in the coming election.
"I'm going to tell you what I think is going on," Rush said. "I think the Clinton war room is back up in full speed . . ."
"This has more to do with helping Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats than protecting teenagers with whom Foley was communicating."
That's all the more reason Hastert should remain at his post and not force Republicans to switch horses so close to the election.
Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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