Slobbering all over

The Big Media is slobbering all over itself, and has been for days now over the resignation of Republican Rep. Mark Foley and the more-than-tawdry revelations found in secretly-saved and sexually explicit Instant Message conversations revealed last week. The Washington Times for instance, a very conservative-friendly publication has called for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert's resignation. For what, I'm not entirely sure.

Hastert can not, nor should he, baby sit every member of the Republican caucus. When Foley's emails to a male page were brought to his attention, the House leadership counseled Foley to cease and desist. Hastert insists that he nor any other members of the leadership knew anything more about Foley's behavior at that point and minus any proof to the contrary, I see no honest reason to lay blame for the situation at the feet of anybody other than Rep. Foley who is solely responsible for his own behavior.

However, that school of thought is not the only one floating around on this. Democrats in the House and in consultant's offices smell blood in the water as do members of the rabid base. And like clockwork, some conservatives can be trusted to go wobbly. Yesterday's entries at The Corner are a perfect example of the back-and-forth, what-to-do kind of uncertainty that cripples Conservative politics at times.

At such a moment cooler heads must prevail. Hugh Hewitt has made the attempt at offering such a perspective on this. First thing yesterday he gave us this advice for the Speaker and the House leadership:

Hastert did not know that Foley was a predator, only that Foley had sent a too-friendly e-mail to one teenage page, the sort of e-mail that would have been completely unremarkable if it hadn't come from a gay Congressman. To have attempted to censure Foley for that e-mail would have been to impose a rule on Congressmen concerning their contacts with minor pages and interns that has no precedent anywhere. The warning about appropriateness that Foley did receive is exactly what ought to have happened and did.

Confirmation of that conclusion is provided by two newspapers.

Until Friday Hastert and other GOP Congressmen knew only what Florida newspapers knew and which those newspapers considered insufficiently newsworthy to run a story about.

Two major newspapers have known about the e-mail for eleven months. There was no story because there was no scandal in the e-mails, only in the IMs, which shock and outrage everyone who reads them, and which have been concealed somewhere for more than three years --itself a scandal, but not one to be laid on the Speaker.

Unless someone has evidence that Hastert or anyone else knew more than the e-mail exchange which two newspapers deemed not newsworthy, the demands for Hastert's resignation will become increasingly absurd against both the facts and also against the backdrop of what the election is really about: the conduct of the war. Editorialists like those at the Washington Times have done their own credibility great damage for a brief bit of pr posing.

Steadying the GOP's Congressional Party will require Hastert and others to stand up and keep returning fire, and to do so with the anger appropriate when one is being smeared. It is also time to take off the gloves about Congressman Jefferson --still in Congress and still on Ways and Means-- Senator Menendez and Colorado's Bill Ritter as well as other past Democratic scandals which have gone unrepented and unpunished, as well as largely unpublished and unpursued by MSM.

Later in the day, came an even stronger admonition to the Right in reply to a Dean Barnett post at Hugh's blog:

"Facts not in evidence" is the phrase that comes to mind, and as the great Dem-MSM scandal machine blows, it is important that center-right pundits keep facts separate from rumors, or at least to footnote the rumors.

I haven't seen any post making these three assertions with on the record (or even off the record) attributions. Dean?

Mark Levin just joined me in an interview in which we both blast the allegedly conservative pundits who are working overtime to toss Republicans under the bus on the basis of zero truthed evidence of GOP leadership complicity other than e-mails which major newspapers, ABC's Brian Ross and evidently the FBI all deemed as insufficiently interesting to publish with dispatch or investigate further.

The pundits/activists calling for hastert's resignation should be asking where those IMs have been for three years and why they are being leaked now? There is an innocent explanation --the Foley target has kept them and has now decided to pass them out, and that would be his right. But there are far from innocent explanations as well, and given the Rathergate example of two years ago, pardon me if I am suspicious.

Hugh's point is simple and clear: the stakes are too high in this election to allow this incident that is simultaneously very real and yet very contrived distract from the important issues of the day. Conservatives adding to the chorus of righteous indignation (in and of itself the very appropriate response to Mr. Foley's actions) do nothing to help the cause.

We need to remain calm and stick to the facts. And, for now at least, the facts don't point to cover up or deceit, rather they point to one man's failings and to a leadership that, perhaps wrongly, was too trusting of one man's word.

There are two basic issues here. First the inexcusable breach of trust on the part of Representative Foley and secondly the political fallout over it. We can all--left and right--be outraged over the first but the timing and circumstances that surround the second smack of a political hit job. That may or may not prove to be true, but drawing conclusions at this point either way in this matter is not wise.

Let's see where the facts take us.