Does anyone else think that John Boehner, at least in part, engineered the ouster of Dennis Hastert from the speakership following the Mark Foley page scandal?

Was a chain of evidence ever established from Mark Foley to Scott Palmer, Hastert's Chief of Staff?

The events I saw in the fall of 2006 following that scandal always struck me as a political coup d'etat within the Republican leadership.

The outlook wasn't brilliant, for the GOP on election day
The polls showed loss of Congress, what with Iraq, and Foley gay
And when Allen got "Macaca'd," and Santorum blew PA
Republicans were so desperate, they fell on their knees to pray

Evangelicals were staying home, suffering loss of faith
But some hoped for worldly wonder, beyond the current eighth
They thought, "If Dubya could just jawbone, of terror and tax cuts"
We'd put up even money now, that we won't take it up the butts

But Cheney preceded Dubya, as did also SECDEF Rummy
And the former was a war criminal, while the latter was a dummy
So upon that stricken multitude, with all their campaign cash
There seemed but little chance of Dubya, getting to talk his trash

CONTINUED AT: http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=289

All over the news is Ted Haggard, the (now former) leader of the influential National Association of Evangelicals, being caught paying for a male prostitute. Wow, those Republicans sure are a racy bunch! My favorite part is that the male prostitute is 49 years old! How sweet!

It sucks to be a fundamentalist christian right now...

Florida Democrats may think that the Foley Scandal has given them one more opportunity to gain a seat in Congress but the Democratic candidate there may be something of a Trojan Horse.

The October 6, 2006 Wall Street Journal described candidate Time Mahoney as a moderate liberal, a gun owner who sees Ronald Reagan as a 'political hero'. He says he is a conservative Christian. Positions actually to the right of some Republicans. Most curious though is his campaign manager Charles Halloran. The Village Voice wrote about Halloran in 2003 saying that he worked on New York Democrat Rev. Al Sharpton's campaign and did so at the bidding of Roger Stone, a Republican activist also described as a Republican trickster. Halloran reportedly has worked on other campaigns for Stone and uses Stone's Central Park address when in New York. Then there is the employer of Mr. Halloran's wife. According to an article in the February 2004 L.A. Weekly.com she has worked for the Carlyle Group, a military-industrial-complex corporation whose alumni include George H.W. Bush, Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan and a slew of others very much involved with the Bush administration agenda in the middle east.

Mr. Mahoney's `attributes' as reported in the Wall Street Journal and the credentials and relationships of his campaign manager urges the question of who is really behind the Mahoney campaign and consequently how will he vote if elected?

Village Voice Link December 21, 2004 Wayne Barrett
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0451,barrett,59421,5.html

LA Weekly.com Link February 19, 2004 Doug Ireland
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/a-prayer-for-rev-al/1974/

Wall Street Journal Link October 6, 2006 Yochi J Dreasen
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116009561443584466-XzwMIxzTVk_GteFJzejKpHxVqGs_20071006.html?mod=blogs

Perhaps George W. Bush is not as divorced from reality as he frequently appears.  Why, just yesterday, appearing at a Republican fundraiser in Chicago, he wowed the audience by demonstrating his ability to distinguish between a politician and a balloon.  Speaking of his embattled comrade, Speaker of the House Dennis Hazmat, the President sagely noted that "he's not one of these Washington politicians who spews a lot of hot air."  Bush then went on to give an uplifting speech in which he touted what a heckuva job the Rebumblicans have been doing and how they are clearly the "best to protect you" (unless "you" happen to be a congressional page).  He asserted that "we're keeping steady pressure on a group of people who would want to do America harm"--by which, of course, he was referring to the Democrats, of whom he actually said, "they can run...but we're not going to let them hide."  As to what the majority party will do with all those tax-loving, terrorist-abetting unAmericans once they nab them, rumor has it that Halliburton has received a no-bid contract to build internment camps in which to house the Dems.  Be afraid; be very afraid.

New analysis from Gallup will spur sales of Maalox at the RNC's neighborhood drug store.  The GOP's greatest fear has come true.  Religious whites, the so-called "values voters" of the 2004 election, are abandoning the Republican Party.

In the wake of the GOP Sexual Predator scandal, the GOP might have taken encouragement from a New York Times story, based mostly on anecdotal evidence, that Evangelical Christians were unlikely to punish the party for the failure of congressional leaders to take action against Mark Foley.  Reporter David Kirkpatrick went so far as to suggest that Republicans might even benefit on election day from religious conservatives' disgust over the perceived cultural permissiveness which might lead to such a scandal.

I thought it might be worthwhile to track the media's coverage of the Foley/Hastert/Predatorgate scandal via a count of Google News stories:

(From past experience I've noted that Google News story counts take a few days to settle down, so it's best to consider the last three four days' data to be tentative.)