What's going on with Chris Shays.

I met him a couple of times when I lived in CT, and during that time he seemed to be one of the few moderate reps and never said anything outrageous.

But this? ....
http://www.connpost.com/news/ci_4509764


(notice who is behind him - Traitor Joe)
..snip
WASHINGTON — Locked in a ferocious re-election battle, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, seemed to buckle under the pressure in the past two weeks when he delivered eye-popping comments on Abu Ghraib, the site of Iraqi prisoner abuse, and Chappaquiddick, a decades-old Kennedy scandal.
..snip
During a debate last week, Shays drew strong criticism for a statement that
seemed to minimize the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by saying it was not torture but a sex scandal.
"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday in Bridgeport. "It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture." The troops involved were, in fact, Army Reservists.
..snip
A week earlier, Shays was on the hot seat for defending House Speaker Dennis Hastert's handling of a congressional page scandal by dredging up Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's 1969 car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which passenger Mary Jo Kopechne was killed. Kennedy had recently campaigned in the district for Farrell.
"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water and then have a press conference the next day," Shays told a Hartford Courant reporter. "Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody."
..snip

to say something like this.

He's always been one of the most honorable politicians I've ever known, and I'm surprised he would make a statement of this sort.

When I say "I've known," I really mean that I've met him a few times, as I'm one of his constituents, but not an acquaintance.

I don't know what got into him. And he also said that anyone who knew about the Foley coverup should resign from Congress.

I have to admit that he's one of the few Republicans I've ever voted for.

I used to see him at the train station in Norwalk around election time and also at the Norwalk Oyster Fest. I even thanked him for standing up to the republican led impeachment of Bill Clinton.

the stress of being in such a tight campaign and facing the real possibility of losing his seat. I am not surprised to hear some of the stuff coming out of Nancy Johnson but I too am surprised at Shays. He was one of the only Republicans to speak out against some of the Administration's policies and was ridiculed for it by his own party. Still, there is no excuse for some of the stuff he's been saying. It seems so unlike him.