Which is why you can't have incompetent dead horses like Hastert running your party.

Heavy coverage at midterm favors Dems. In other news, the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Next.

Hastert is fine, and handled the Foley thing perfectly. If the GOP had handled Foley more before the Dems/media created the scandal, they would have been equally tarred with gay-bashing. If there's fault in the GOP, it's with Florida voters who elected the guy.

The heavy coverage is a sign of how desperate the left is. Media liberals are sabotaging their own employers in order to get the Dems back in power.

I don't believe that any voters will vote for a Dem instead of a Rep just because of Foley. As far as I can see, the only people who got excited about the Foley story was Democrats who were just SURE that Republicans would be devastated by it.

Tarred? They need to be the anti-gay party. That's one of the ways they'll steal Latinos & blacks from the Dems.

ray:

Libertarians, paleocons and neocons were excited, seeing it as proof that the party couldn't be run well by the wing of the party that actually attracts voters.

It's not Hastert's job to babysit every creepy backbencher. He has plenty of weaknesses but this is not one of them.

However, Foley should have been purged years ago given his pattern of behavior. Ideally the state or national party would have told him to start his lobbying career after helping elect a successor.

In general, I'd say the Dems out recruited the Republicans with candidates. The R's could not find good candidates in places like CT (ok Joe), FL, WV, WA, MN, etc and in many open House seats. Add that to the 15 seat margin and the normal 6 year effect and you lose the chamber. In contrast, look what Michael Steele is doing in MD to see what a good recruit looks like. He's not a self funding millionaire, just a good strong candidate. Same with NJ to a lesser degree.

Liddy Dole was heading up the recruitment process. Supposedly her team wanted Foley to look at the Senate seat last year.

Considering the great job Harris is doing, Foley, even with the resignation, would have been an improvement. Unlike her, at least he has the smarts (and party loyalty) to get out when he became a liability.

Michael Steele is an exceptional candidate, you won't find hundreds of Michael Steeles. The Republican candidates are for the most part superior to the Democratic candidates.

The Democratic candidates only look better because they have a huge media advantage, which Republican candidates can't compete with effectively because they don't have a policy rallying flag to draw people round with, since the Bush administration doesn't have a well-articulated domestic agenda and the war is unpopular.

It's Hastert's job to make sure his party isn't sandbagged by a scandal that any blog commentator knows is poison.

The people who say it doesn't matter lack credibility.

1) Foley should have be asked quietly to leave after the first supposedly innoccuous letter. Any rational member of the public would have laughed at the "this is gay-bashing" argument. Even if they thought such, they would have supported it in this circumstance.

2) Hastert/Leadership cravenly asked Foley to serve another term at a time he actually wanted to retire. (according to Novak)

3) The story stopped R momentum dead in it's tracks, while making many of the rank & file right wonder just what the trough-feeders at the top were thinking.
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If the R's, with the help of the addled Kerry, manage to pull this off, they would do very well to clean house and cashier Hastert, Reynolds, and any other numbnut responsible for the various messes they've made up there.

If it mattered someone would campaign on it. No one is.

Like I said, nobody cared about it. Certainly, no voter in Ohio is going to change his vote because some creep in Florida sent nasty emails.

The Dems really really believe their own propaganda--that Republican party consists only of people who hate gays and will turn against Repubs if they catch a whiff of "gay".

Rather, the problem is the bizarre notion that Republicans would vote Democrat to punish gays.