Apparently, the Speaker of the House thinks that no one who actually follows the news listens to conservative talk radio.
That's the only explanation for Hastert's claim, during a Tuesday attempt at face saving on Rush Limbaugh's show, that he and other GOP leaders had forced Florida Congressman Mark Foley to quit after it was revealed that the Republican representative had been sending "Do I make you horny?" emails to teenage Congressional pages.
"We took care of Mr. Foley," Hastert told Limbaugh. "We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone."Sounds good. There's only one problem.
Hastert was making the whole thing up.
Foley quit after the news of the emails was broken by ABC's Brian Ross. There has never been any indication that the congressman spoke with members of the Republican leadership. Indeed, by all accounts, including those of Hastert's office, Foley quit of his own accord before consulting in any way with the Speaker or any other Republican leader.more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20061004/cm_thenation/15127152_1full transcript here:
RUSH: We're happy to be joined now by the Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert. Mr. Speaker, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to speak to you again, sir.
SPEAKER HASTERT: Thanks, Rush. Great to be with you today.
RUSH: Now, I guess the big news is, the Washington Times' admittedly conservative editorial page has asked for you to step down and resign, and you have said you're not going to do that. Correct?
SPEAKER HASTERT:
Well, yeah. I'm not going to do that. What we've tried to do is -- focused on this Foley thing is -- do the right thing. We had two messages. There were two pieces of paper out there, one that we knew about and we acted on; one that happened in 2003 we didn't know about, but somebody had it, and, you know, they're trying -- and they drop it the last day of the session, you know, before we adjourn on an election year. Now, we took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone. We asked for an investigation. We've done that. We're trying to build better protections for these page programs. But, you know, this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we've tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism -- and we've worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it -- and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.
RUSH: Well, it's clear to me that what the Democrats are doing here in some sort of cooperation with some in the media is to suppress conservative turnout by making it look like you guys knew this all along but because you're so interested in holding the House rather than protecting children that you covered it up.
SPEAKER HASTERT: Yeah.
RUSH: And I like what you said yesterday, if I may editorialize this way, when you said, "Look, somebody knew this long before we knew it. Somebody knew about those instant messages," and you asked for an investigation into who knew what when. We know that a couple of newspapers in Florida knew a lot more than they were willing to release, and Brian Ross of ABC admitted that he knew about this all the way back in August but he didn't have time for it then because he was worried about the Katrina anniversary and September 11th and so forth. Is that investigation you've called for going to go anywhere? Who's going to chair that? Who's going to run that?
SPEAKER HASTERT: Well, first of all, you know, we've asked the federal government. We asked the FBI. I don't think you could ask anybody better than the FBI, and they have brought this investigation forward. We've also asked the State of Florida, because it's my understanding that's where most of these messages circa 2003 came from. So we've asked the State of Florida to come forward with an investigation as well.
RUSH: Many of my listeners watch all this, and they see a predictable pattern. They've been watching politics and observing it for many years now. They see that this is a strategic political, or politically timed, release of information, particularly based on how long ago it has been known, and there is -- I have to tell you there's -- a hunger and a real craving amongst conservative voters for Republicans in Washington, House and Senate both, to simply refuse to be set back on your heels and accept this defensive position and just go on offense and strike back at these guys. "Hey, Mark Foley is not what the future of this country is about. It's about protecting the nation, national security, prosperity, ongoing efforts to maintain a good economy, not destroying the health care system," and this sort of thing. Is there a problem that Republicans in the House and the Senate have about going on offense when these kind of things happen?
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_100306/content/eib_interview.guest.html
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