Hastert Should Go.

It looks like tomorrow, the Washington Times is going to call for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to resign. I think the paper is right to do so, Mark Levin does not.

Sometimes the pressure is too much for some, who can’t even wait for additional information to come to light before drawing attention to themselves. And, of course, the Washington Times, which is despised by the rest of the media, will miraculously become an important authoritative source — representative of conservatives and conservative thought. Unfortunatley, I expect there will be more of this, and I consider it utterly irresponsible.

With deference to Levin, who I consider to be a smart and insightful man, what more information do we need? Hastert knew about at least some of the communications between Mark Foley and an underaged boy. Even if he didn’t know about the sexually explicit communications, it seems obvious that Hastert did little to rectify the situation. In fact, we know that Republicans never bothered to let the Democrat on the House Page Board of the improper communications. That by itself is inexcuseable. Couple that with Hastert’s despicable twarting of a criminal investigation of William Jefferson, who has bribe money sitting in his freezer, and it’s clear that Hastert is far more interested in closing ranks around members of Congress than he is in making sure that Congress is open and clean.

We have no room in Congress for someone who did what the evidence says Mark Foley did. That folks like Barney Frank, Ted Kennnedy, William Jefferson, Cynthia McKinney, and others have managed to commit crimes and remain in office, even for a little while, is a blemish on our political process. Now, what Foley did may or may not be a crime – the FBI is investigating whether or not a crime actually took place – but that doesn’t excuse it by any stretch. What the evidence shows Foley did was highly improper and it certainly wasn’t behavior we should allow from any member of Congress. It was, in my mind, just as inappropriate as a President indulging in sexual relations with a young intern in the Oval Office.

These folks are elected to represent us, not use the power we entrust with them to shield themselves from their own sins. Dennis Hastert, as the leader of the House of Representatives is responsible for making sure that any betrayal of that trust, at least by members of his party, is punished as severely as possible. Hastert’s disturbing behavior now and with the Jefferson case proves that his interest does not lie with serving the American people, but with ensuring the entitlement of his fellow Congressmen, even when that entitlement works against the best interest of those they represent. As such, he should resign as Speaker immediately.

Mr. Levin is wrong about this. We don’t need any more information than we already have. Hastert’s first impulse when he found out even part of what Foley did was to cover it up. That sort of behavior should never be rewarded. Ever.

UPDATE: Here’s the editorial. The only real quibble I have with it is this part:

Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the House Page Board, said he learned about the Foley e-mail messages “in late 2005.” Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the leader of the Republican majority, said he was informed of the e-mail messages earlier this year. On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year.

It’s not fair to say that Hastert dissembled. We don’t know for sure whether that is true. It could be that he simply forgot about a series of improper e-mails between a gay male Congressman and a teenaged boy.

Wait. Go back and read that last sentence. Do you think that, had the Congressman been a heterosexual man and the teenaged page a girl, the obvious wrong of the situation would have been more obvious? I suspect that gay men are occasionally attracted to teenaged boys in the same way that some heterosexual men are attracted to teenaged girls. I don’t think there’s any reason to expect that the gay version of Lolita could not be written because the premise would be too ridiculous. I wonder if Speaker Hastert ever considered that?

Somehow I don’t think he did. I don’t think he turned the situation over in his mind and considered what he would do if there were a young girl involved in this. As I said before, I believe that Hastert’s first instinct was to minimize the incident and shove it as far into a dark corner as he could so as to protect a member of the club. No Speaker should ever have that instinct. I think of Newt Gingrich. For all that some people despised him, he never went out of his way to protect any member of Congress from the consequences of their wrongdoing. He had a record of holding members accountable for their actions that is rare in Congress today. Hastert has the opposite instinct and that makes him unsuitable for the position.

Mark Levin has more thoughts. He still think that folks like me are being premature:

Oh yes, I hear we conservatives are better than the liberals, and that we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. But throwing Republican leaders overboard to prove the point without sufficient information is no standard at all. It may make pundits more comfortable and may attract praise from unlikely circles, but it doesn’t make us better than liberals. In fact, it doesn’t make us better people, period. What we need is information. Most of us only learned about the Foley communications last Friday. Demanding Hastert’s head tonight, as I said in an earlier post, is irresponsible. Among other things, we need to know who was aware of these three-year-old instant messages, only to make them public at a time of enormous help to the House Democrats. Clearly Foley wasn’t the only one exploiting these teenagers.

Well, no, Mr. Levin. We don’t need to know who leaked the messages in order to know whether Dennis Hastert is fit to remain Speaker. Those are two separate issues.

I do think it’s important to find out whether the Foley e-mails were leaked at this particular moment, between the primary election and the general election, for maximum advantage to the Democrat running againt Foley. I’m fairly certain that the Democrats bloviating about Foley and Hastert today aren’t doing so because they care one tiny hill of beans about the young man who is the victim in this story. If they did, they certainly would not be waving the e-mails around, considering, as Mr. Levin points out elsewhere, the boy’s family wanted the incident handled quietly. I have no doubt that the “non-partisan” group that released the e-mails did so to have the largest possible impact on the election as it could and that it cares nothing at all about putting these embarassing messages out there where they will haunt the young man for years to come.

But that’s beside the point. The Republicans have to do the right thing here, even if that means giving some advantage to a bunch of self-centered, politically-motivated, hypocritical, criminal-coddling, racist-supporting Democrats. I’m sure there’s a way that Hastert can step down while noting the integrity of the move is in direct contrast to the lack of integrity shown by his political opponents. And then the new Republican leader can spend the next two years driving the various scandals of Kennedy, Byrd, Frank, McKiney, Jefferson, and the others right down their hypocritical throats.

But first, even though it pains Levin for him to do it, Dennis Hastert has to step down.

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Category: General, Political Pontifications