|
Republicans cry foul over October Surprise™
DENNIS HASTERT, the besieged Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has accepted responsibility for the scandal involving the disgraced former congressman Mark Foley, who sent sexually explicit emails to young interns.Under increasing pressure to resign, Mr Hastert, while saying "the buck stops here" for the fact that nothing was done to stop Mr Foley, has implied that the whole affair is a plot concocted by the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton and the billionaire liberal activist George Soros. "All I know is what I hear and what I see," Mr Hastert said. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about it all along. If someone had this info when they had it, we could have dealt with it then." A Republican Party official told the Herald that Mr Hastert's attempt to blame the Foley scandal on a Democrat conspiracy would only make matters worse for Republicans. Mr Hastert insisted he did nothing wrong and that he did not ignore warnings from senior congressional aides going back three years suggesting Mr Foley was engaging in "inappropriate" behaviour with a series of congressional pages - high school students doing work experience. "When the Congress found out about the explicit messages, Republicans dealt with it immediately and the culprit was gone. I have done nothing wrong", Mr Hastert said. "But the fact is that I don't know who knew what, when. We know that there are reports of people that knew it and kind of fed it and leaked it to the press." Posted by: Fred 2006-10-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=167958 |