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Mark Foley: The Other Victims
Innocent teenage Pages weren't the only ones wronged by Representative Mark "Slip those off" Foley. For a necessarily incomplete list of who's fucked now, and why, check in after the jump.
- House Speaker Dennis Hastert (pictured, left): NRCC chair Tom Reynolds sold him out in a statement this weekend, making "Hastert knew" an easy-to-remember and inescapable refrain by Monday. Until he can come up with a suitable way to spin the story of his role in the coverup, he'll make a great whipping boy for Republican incumbents. And even the truest of believers.
- National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Reynolds: The man in charge of making sure Republicans retain the House is in a tight spot -- as we mentioned, he's a friend of Foley and hired an even closer friend of Foley as his Chief of Staff. Howard Kurtz reports that "Foley's former chief of staff " tried to shut ABC up before they went public with the IMs. We suspect this is current Reynolds CoS Kirk Forham, who "returned to Foley's side to advise him during the past couple of days." Reynolds was the first to hop on the Blame Denny bandwagon, and his own reelection isn't quite a sure thing.
- The entire House Republican leadership: See above. Plus, Majority Leader John Boehner, who arrived late to this party, has to distance himself from everyone despite not actually having the clout and power of Reynolds and Hastert.
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA): The Page from the emails was his. When approached with the complaint from the creeped out kid, he took it to known friend-of-Foley Reynolds for "investigation," and Reynolds took it to Hastert to coordinate the coverup.
- Charlie Crist: Bear with us. Crist, Florida's GOP candidate for Governor, is another famously-closeted occasionally-outed always-denying Republican... from Florida. Florida's already home to Katherine Harris, whose
disastrousspectacular campaign has meant that many would-be Republican voters may stay home. Now add in that funny picture we put up top of Crist with Foley. It could turn into the candidates one real weakness, if his loser opponent could manage to make it stick. But it's a long shot. - Focus Features Executive Jack Foley.
Josh Marshall goes into a bit more detail, but if anything could lose the House for the GOP, it's this.
Of course, the Democrats may not capitalize on this at all, because they are squeamish and inept, but they can let the infighting do their work for them for another day or two while they formulate a strategy.