Will The Dems Come Clean?

"Just as it must be determined whether any Republican members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal Mr. Foley's activities," wrote Georgia GOP Representative Jack Kingston yesterday to Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, "it must also be determined whether any Democrat members or political operatives were aware of and attempted to conceal these same activities." (CNN)

Of course it is, and of course they did. Revelations like the Foley affair do not naturally break in October of an election year; they are engineered to break at those times. Yesterday on the same subject Curt at Flopping Aces wrote:

Recall that a friend of [Foley IM-er] Jordon [Edmund]’s has said that this was all a prank to get Foley to say some nasty stuff….

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

Curt also presents solid evidence that former page Chris Katsaros, who appears over and over again in the page scandal, comes from a stridently anti-Bush family, and notes that Katsaros paged for Pelosi who, along with her staff, defines the term "political operative favorable to Democrats."

None of this changes the opinion I posted yesterday that Speaker Hastert should resign; in fact, it reinforces my opinion.

Sordid Democratic politicking will be revealed in this scandal, and it will likely go pretty far up the ranks of party leadership. When that happens, if Hastert is still in office, there will be no pressure placed on Dems to shake up their leadership.

But if Hastert does resign, Dem leadership will be in a pickle. They can either claim an indefensibile double standard by refusing to resign, or they can resign to the detriment of their party organization. Either way, we win.

Related Tags: Politics, Foley, DNC, GOP