After having the majority whip resign for corruption, it WOULD look very bad if the second in line for the presidency were to have to resign as house speaker, or worse, resign as a congressman. Most likely, as Hastert twists and turns, digging himself further and further into a quicksand of his own creation, he will be forced to resign, at first from his position as majority leader.
Hastert was THE person responsible for the congressional page program. The buck stopped with him and he blew it. He'll probably go the way of Trent Lott, only the fall is a lot further to go from second in line for the presidency and head of the house to just another congressman.
In Hastert's Illinois 14th district, his Democratic opponent, John Laesch's campaign has been inundated with phone calls and emails from new volunteers and what had seemed to be a daunting race against a massively better funded opponent is looking better and better. Laesch, a veteran who served in the middle east, is seeing the campaign take off, with a big jump in campaign contributions over the weekend and a flock of mainstream media interviews including CNN, CBS, NPR, Washington Times, Ed Schultz...
If the Republican leadership decides to allow Hastert to stay, they'll be setting up the Dems with a beautifully ugly target. Hastert, who has been able to stay in the background most of the time, really is an ugly politician, whose face alone is a real liability. And when he starts talking, he sound stupid, nasty, and like the sterotypical back-room, cigar smoking politician Americans have grown to despise.
If the intensity of the media coverage continues even a few more days, Hastert's failure to do his job, his cover-up of the internet sexual predatiobns of Foley could collapse the whole republican termite hive down.
