Pressure builds on Hastert over Foley scandal

Yesterday, The Washington Times -- often an important barometer of conservative opinion -- bluntly called on Hastert to resign his leadership post, saying he has ``forfeited the confidence of the public and his party" because of his response to the scandal involving Representative Mark Foley. Other prominent conservatives, expressing outrage that Hastert was slow to act to protect minors who work for Congress, have also said that the Illinois Republican should step down as speaker.

Hastert has said he did not see until recent days sexually explicit e-mails between Foley and congressional pages -- only ones that seemed ``over-friendly." But even Hastert's top deputy, House majority leader John A. Boehner , yesterday laid the blame for the handling of the scandal with Hastert. Boehner said he spoke with Hastert about the matter in the spring.

``I talked to the speaker, and he told me it had been taken care of," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said yesterday in an interview with a Cincinnati radio station. ``It's in his corner; it's his responsibility. The clerk of the House who runs the page program, the Page Board -- all report to the speaker. And I believe that it had been dealt with."

Underscoring the political stakes, President Bush yesterday addressed the matter for the first time, saying that he was ``disgusted" and ``disappointed" by the disclosures regarding Foley, a Florida Republican who was born in Newton. He also issued a public endorsement of Hastert's leadership, by commending him for calling for a full Justice Department investigation.

``Families have every right to expect that when they send their children to be a congressional page in Washington, that those children will be safe," Bush said outside an elementary school in Stockton, Calif. ``I know that [Hastert] wants all the facts to come out, and he wants to ensure that these children up there on Capitol Hill are protected. I'm confident he will provide whatever leadership he can to law enforcement in this investigation."

Hastert yesterday said he would not step down, saying that his resignation would only serve to fuel Democratic attacks on Republican candidates for Congress.

``I'm not going to do that," he told conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. ``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."

The recriminations aimed at Hastert are particularly striking because the speaker had until now largely ducked the fallout from the ethics scandals that have enveloped some of his colleagues.

Through indictments and resignations -- as well as legislative defeats and growing Democratic optimism about next month's elections -- the burly former wrestling coach retained the confidence of the Republican House members who first selected him as their leader in December 1998. Even when rank-and-file Republicans demanded new leadership elections to replace Hastert's top deputy, then-majority leader Tom DeLay, Hastert's job was secure.

But now, Hastert, 64, finds himself at the center of a widening political scandal that's threatening GOP control of Congress. Hastert's admission that he knew of an e-mail exchange between Foley and a former page but did not probe more deeply or alert law enforcement authorities has made a scandal involving one House member into an embarrassment for all Republicans.

``I was thinking we were turning the corner" in the battle to hold onto the House, said former representative Jack Quinn, a New York Republican who retired from the House last year. ``But this just dumps a bombshell onto everything, and the news is not going away."

Hastert and his aides have maintained that when House leaders became aware of communication between Foley and a page in November, they instructed Foley to cease contact with the page. But Hastert said that until last week, he was aware only of a nonexplicit exchange where Foley asked the youth, a Louisiana native who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina, to send a picture.

Since then, far more sexually suggestive messages between Foley and another page have surfaced. ABC News reported yesterday that Foley had a sexually explicit Internet exchange with a high school student and former page during a House vote in 2003, and also encouraged the youth to drink with him. It was unclear whether this was a different page from the first two.

Foley, who abruptly resigned on Friday, has entered an alcohol rehabilitation program and has not commented publicly about the latest allegations.

So far, no Republican House members have directly called for Hastert to step down. Several, including Representative Christopher H. Shays, a Connecticut Republican who was among the first to call for DeLay to leave leadership, have said that any House leaders who knew of the extent of Foley's contacts with pages should be dismissed from leadership.

Hours after Boehner's radio appearance, the majority leader wrote a response to the Washington Times editorial defending Hastert's response.

``Had Speaker Hastert or anyone else in our leadership known about Mr. Foley's despicable conduct, I'm confident the speaker would have moved to expel Mr. Foley immediately and turn him over to the appropriate authorities," Boehner wrote.

The political fallout has been swift. Democrats across the country are making the issue local by demanding that candidates and campaign committees return campaign cash Foley donated.

In Minnesota, Democratic House candidate Patty Wetterling launched a television ad yesterday accusing House leaders of covering up Foley's actions. Representative Tom Reynolds, a New York Republican who chairs the Republicans' House campaign committee, faces a tighter race of his own after acknowledging having heard last year of the first nonsexual e-mail, said University of Buffalo political scientist James Campbell.

But in Washington, most of the heat is on Hastert. Chosen as a calming influence after the back-to-back resignations of speaker Newt Gingrich and speaker-designate Bob Livingston, Hastert has massaged the outsized egos of his colleagues while keeping firm control of the House, making him perhaps the White House's most reliable congressional ally.

But the Foley scandal underscores a sometimes overlooked aspect of Hastert's leadership: his aggressive efforts to keep wrongdoing by House members under wraps. Under Hastert's leadership, the internal ethics enforcement system has atrophied -- the ethics committee spent most of the current two-year session locked in partisan sniping that kept it from even formally organizing -- and Hastert tried to keep DeLay's job open for him even after it became clear that the criminal charges filed against him weren't going away.

Hastert's tendency to protect the Republican majority has made him popular among his colleagues, but could wind up being his downfall, said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. ``Inattention to a sick, sick, sick activity is not something someone wants in a speaker," Fitton said. ``I'll be surprised if he lasts the week."