President Bush signaled his support for Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday as the House Speaker fought to retain his gavel in the wake of an unfolding sex scandal.
The White House’s support of Hastert is a stark contrast to the controversy that upended former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) when administration officials were working behind the scenes to promote Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
Hastert and the president have worked closely together during Bush’s almost six years in the White House, and administration support is crucial for the Speaker to maintain his post in the face of criticism from various conservative activists.
“I fully support Speaker Hastert’s call for an investigation by law enforcement into this matter,” Bush told reporters yesterday in Stockton, Calif., during his first public comments about former Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) electronic exchanges with former pages. “This investigation should be thorough and any violations of the law should be prosecuted.”
During his brief remarks, the president also offered the Speaker his personal support.
“I know Denny Hastert,” Bush said. “I know he 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.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) offered mild support to Hastert during an interview on CNN yesterday from Baghdad, but he would not comment extensively on the unfolding scandal because he said he has not been following all the details while traveling to Iraq.
Meanwhile, Foley’s lawyer, David Roth, held a press conference yesterday in Florida to state on the lawmaker’s behalf that Foley was sexually abused by a member of the clergy during his teenage years, the Associated Press reported.
Following initial calls for his resignation, Hastert and his staff hit the conservative talk-radio circuit yesterday, including interviews with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, to make his case to conservative Republicans.
“The first thing is to talk about what you knew and when you knew it,” Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said yesterday. “Now, it’s time to talk about the issue of protecting pages and move on to other issues affecting the American people.”
The Speaker flew back to Illinois Monday night after a conference call with his Republican colleagues.
Members of the Speaker’s own elected leadership team have wavered in their support of Hastert since the Illinois Republican told reporters that he first learned of the e-mails last Friday, after news broke that Foley exchanged “overly friendly” e-mails with a former page.
Shortly after Rep. Tom Reynolds (N.Y.), the Republican campaign chief, disputed that account, the Speaker’s staff released a timeline over the weekend that showed that some of his top advisers had known about the e-mails since the fall of 2005.
House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told a Cincinnati radio reporter yesterday that he had discussed the issue with Hastert last spring, once again reversing course about his conversation with the Speaker.
“I believe I talked to the Speaker and he told me it had been taken care of,” Boehner said during an interview Tuesday morning on WLW radio in Cincinnati.
The Washington Post reported something similar on its website Friday and in some editions of its Saturday paper, but Boehner denied making those remarks after the article appeared online.
During his radio interview yesterday, the majority leader said Hastert and his staff should be fully responsible for the results of a previous or current investigation.
“My position is it’s in his corner, it’s his responsibility,” Boehner said. “The Clerk of the House who runs the page program, the Page Board, all report to the Speaker, and I believe it had been dealt with.”
An ABC News account of those comments was widely distributed around town yesterday with the subject line “Under the bus.”
Hours afterward, Boehner’s staff released a letter-to-the-editor responding to an editorial in The Washington Times yesterday that called on Hastert to resign.
“[N]o one in the leadership, including Speaker Hastert, had any knowledge of the warped and sexually explicit instant messages that were revealed by ABC News last Friday,” Boehner wrote. “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.”
This back-and-forth between Hastert and other members of his leadership sets an unsettling tone for top party officials on the brink of the upcoming midterms.
Hastert does have one procedural advantage in holding onto his job: Because the entire House votes to elect the Speaker, members would have to return to Washington to vote him out of office.
Republican Reps. Henry Hyde (Ill.)and Patrick McHenry (N.C.) issued statements yesterday in support of Hastert as part of an early effort to rally the troops for the embattled Speaker. Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), however, said “more aggressive action should have been taken” regarding Foley’s conduct.
The Christian Coalition of America sent Hastert a letter of support yesterday, stating, “The supporters of Christian Coalition of America will continue to pray for you and our other leaders as you work to solve these momentous problems.”
But many GOP lobbyists are fearing that the Foley scandal will help Democrats seize control of at least one chamber of Congress this fall. Some on K Street believe Hastert should step down, noting that the media coverage of the scandal is likely to drag on throughout October.
One K Street insider said the mood among Republican lobbyists is “grim.”
For Hastert’s staff, yesterday’s outreach to conservative radio was an appeal to Republican base voters in the face of concerns that those voters may stay home this November.
“We wanted to express our outrage and, at the same time, talk about how Republicans are standing together to maintain our majority this November,” Bonjean said. “The Democrats would like to see a scandal to distract from the war on terror on growing the economy – the market hit an all-time high [yesterday].”
Bonjean is a veteran of Lott’s office. He served as the senator’s spokesman during the flap that unseated his boss from the leadership following the Mississippi Republican’s comments at former Sen. Strom Thurmond’s (R-S.C.) 100th birthday party in 2002.