The Party of Corruption and Hypocrisy Chances for Keeping the House Just Got Dimmer

by Mary

The election game is changing so fast that it's hard to keep up with all the plays. One really enormous fumble today is the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) for indulging in cyber-sex with minors. What makes it even a bigger play is that Rep. Foley has been a major sponsor of some very harsh laws that address sexual predators who use the internet for their sexual pleasure. Can you say hypocrisy?

Anyway, Florida was already a state where the GOP was troubled because of the fumbling candidacy of Katherine "Pink Sugar" Harris which threatened at least one key Republican Congressional seat. With the late withdrawal of Rep. Foley, his safe Republican seat will be much harder to win, especially if the Republicans cannot change the ballot. Of course, it is important to note that Florida has many precincts with touch-screen voting machines and they've passed a law that makes it illegal to hand count any ballots that have already been machine counted. So don't count the Repubs out yet. We may see a Representative Foley and a Senator Harris despite the fact that only 29% of the Floridians will actually vote for them.

Update: Oh gosh, it gets even worse.

So Rep. Alexander knew about this 10 or 11 months ago. And he says he notified the House leadership. That means Hastert and (at the time) either Tom DeLay or Rep. Blunt (R-MO). We don't know it was either of those three men yet. But that's what Alexander means when he says he "notified the House leadership." They're the House leadership.

If I'm understanding this correctly, that means that the leaders of the House Republican caucus have known for almost a year that a member of their caucus was having cybersex with an underage congressional page. And apparently they did nothing about it.