Rumor has it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will host a press conference in Chicago this morning. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he, at a minimum, announces that he will not seek the speakership in January, because at this point, it’s hard to see how his authority can remain intact. The facts are simply, and literally, overwhelming.
A longtime chief of staff to disgraced former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) approached House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s office three years ago, repeatedly imploring senior Republicans to help stop Foley’s advances toward teenage male pages, the staff member said yesterday.
The account by Kirk Fordham, who resigned yesterday from his job with another senior lawmaker, pushed back to 2003 or earlier the time when Hastert’s staff reportedly became aware of Foley’s questionable behavior concerning teenagers working on Capitol Hill.
It raised new questions about Hastert’s assertions that senior GOP leaders were aware only of “over-friendly” e-mails from 2005 that they say did not raise alarm bells when they came to light this year.
In addition to the emails, Fordham explained yesterday that he had a detailed conversation in 2003 abut Mark Foley’s excessive interest in teenaged pages with Hastert’s chief of staff, Scott Palmer, probably the House’s most powerful aide. What’s more, Palmer reportedly followed up by confronting Foley, three years ago, about his conduct — a meeting which Hastert reportedly knew about. (Palmer insists that Fordham’s accounts are wrong, though it’s unclear what motivation Fordham would have to lie right now.)
With this in mind, it’s increasingly difficult for Hastert to assert he had no idea there was a problem, and that he was completely in the dark until seven days ago. No one, anywhere, buys it. Fordham’s revelations appear to be the nail in the coffin — a GOP strategist with close ties to Capitol Hill told the LA Times, “If the claim holds up, it is hard to see how the speaker survives.”
To be sure, the sharks are circling.
Human Events, one of the nation’s key right-wing news magazines, will reportedly join the Washington Times today in calling for Hastert’s resignation. “We think the Republicans need new leaders, and I don’t think Hastert will be there much longer,” Tom Winter, the editor-in-chief said. “I think he has to do this for the team, he has to step down.”
In key, competitive House races, meanwhile, several candidates nationwide — including Martha Rainville (Vt.), Rick O’Donnell (Colo.) and Peter Roskam (Ill.) — have all said publicly that they won’t back Hastert for Speaker until the Justice Department completes its investigation
In the Senate, meanwhile, John McCain (R-Ariz.) is making the House look pretty foolish by calling on credible former lawmakers to come in and help determine how badly the House GOP leadership screwed up. It only helps reinforce the notion that the chamber is in desperate need of some grown-ups.
It’s even reached the point in which National Review’s John Podhoretz offered a message for Nancy Pelosi: “Madame Speaker, you may start measuring the drapes.”
The irony, of course, is that Fordham was going to keep these key details to himself. He didn’t go out in a blaze of glory, trying to take the GOP leadership with him; he resigned quietly and blamed Democrats and the media. Then, unable to help themselves, Hastert and his team started making Fordham the fall guy for the whole sordid mess.
As Christopher Orr noted, it was perhaps the dumbest move imaginable.
Fordham sees the smear (which he categorically denies) and is incensed–he was, after all, trying to take one for the team by resigning. So he blows the whole place up by noting that, in fact, he’d contacted Hastert’s office concerning Foley’s inappropriate behavior a full two years ago and they did nothing.
How unimaginably stupid are the GOP “sources” who tried to screw Fordham over?
Assuming Hastert gives up his post as a result of this scandal, he’ll be asking that question for quite a while.