Well it is raining here in New York today... Hastert Will Step Down Exclusive: The Speaker bows out of the Republican leadership after Democrats take his power. The contest to succeed him will help define the Republican Party in a new era of divided government. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) will not seek reelection to the Republican leadership when his members return as a minority party after taking heavy losses in Tuesday's elections, a Republican official tells TIME. Hastert, 64, a low-key former high school wrestling coach, was beloved by members as a "good cop," compared to the enforcer style of the longtime number two leader, former Rep. Tom Delay (R-Tex.). But Hastert was badly damaged by questions about how much he had known about former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and his contact with pages, and members felt Hastert also handled the aftermath of the revelations clumsily. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1556550,00.html
I thought he was going to step down anyway, and has a date with the Foley bus that Republicans will be tossing him under?
That was entirely predictable.... Rumsfeld, not so much. Still, I wouldn't have thought it would come out today.
This is a little bit of a shame. Hastert was a good guy who got caught in a really bad situation that he had little or nothing to do with. I understand needing a fall guy, but this is a situation where the leader wasn't strong and corruption under him was more than he could handle. That being said, I'm betting that Hastert is glad to be rid of the hassle.
Rummy's bus driver pulled up, when the last two Senates went to the Terrorists. Ditching Rummy makes big political sense and I strongly suspect that Rove's hand is at work here. If Rummy had stayed, he would have been completely brutalized before both Houses until he had zero political viability left. Leaving now, Rummy won't be in the news cycle for the next 3-4 months and W won't be taking those political hits.
