Hastert: Would Resign if it Would Help Republicans
Raw story has the news:
Survey USA:
43% think he should resign from Congress.
20% think he should resign his leadership position as speaker.
27% think he should remain speaker.
Just 10% are "not sure" what he should do.
Rasmussen Reports:
Embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has told conservative activist Paul Weyrich that he would resign if it would help the Republicans, Congressional Quarterly is reporting.Hastert's reasoning for why he thought his resignation would not be beneficial to Republicans was interesting:
"He said if he thought that resigning would be helpful to the Republicans maintaining the majority, he would do it," Weyrich said in an interview. "But he did not think it would be helpful for Republicans."
"[Hastert] said he thought his resignation would just lead to a feeding frenzy where they would go after (Majority Leader John A.) Boehner, then (Rep. Thomas M.) Reynolds, then (Rep. John) Shimkus. And he said we would have the story running right up to the election."David Sirota makes a great a point about this:
Understand what Hastert is saying: He’s not going to resign because he feels embarrassed that he helped cover up a child sex predator’s behavior. No, he’s only going to resign if he feels it will help Republicans.Here are some of the latest numbers:
Survey USA:
43% think he should resign from Congress.
20% think he should resign his leadership position as speaker.
27% think he should remain speaker.
Just 10% are "not sure" what he should do.
Rasmussen Reports:
The Rasmussen Reports survey found 61 percent of Americans believe Republicans have been "protecting Foley for several years." Only 21 percent believed the GOP leaders learned about Foley's problems last week.Time:
A Time magazine poll showed that two-thirds of Americans who knew about the scandal believed the Republican leadership tried to cover it up. Just 16 percent approved of the way Republicans have handled it.And there is also, of course, the Fox News internal poll mentioned yesterday:
House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.Quite frankly, I'm surprised Hastert didn't resign Friday afternoon to take advantage of the weekend news dump. It seems unlikely at this point that he'll hang on until the election; doing so would just keep attention on the Foley scandal all through October. Unfortunately, given the short political attention span of the American public, Hastert may be able to ride this one out relatively unscathed. I guess it depends in part on how fast the ethics probe begins picking up steam. Regardless of the political ramifications, it seems clear to me: Hastert participated in this cover-up and for this he must be relieved of his leadership duties in the House, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
"The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker," a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. "And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss."
