Hastert Blames Media, Soros, Clinton

I'm warning my political friends not to get too giddy over this Foley scandal. There is NO WAY Karl Rove and his operatives are not turning over every seedy political connection he has ever known. Looking for the tactics to turn this apparent Republican disaster into a Republican triumph, Rove will invent a perfect storm of whispers, innuendo and smears designed to ensure any defense by the target will only twist him or her deeper into the damage Rove intends to wreck. The following story shows some evidence of sprouting along those evil lines already:

Hastert Blames Media, Soros, Clinton: "House Speaker Dennis Hastert, fighting for his political survival, is lashing out at the news media, George Soros and even associates of former President Clinton.

...Hastert suggested there may be a backlash when Republicans learn how the Foley story came to dominate the news cycle. 'When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy,'' Hastert told the Chicago Tribune of the firestorm over Mark Foley's contacts with House pages. 'The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Demoratic operatives, people funded by George Soros,'' Hastert says in the interview published this morning.

It was ABC news who confronted Foley with e-mails last Friday which led to his immediate resigation. Soros has contributed money to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which turned over some Foley e-mails to the FBI this summer. As for Clinton, the Tribune writes that Hastert suggested that 'operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.'' 'All I know is what I hear and what I see,'' Hastert told the Tribune. 'I saw Bill Clinton's adviser Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then.''

but maybe this is the good news:

However The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reported today that ABC's original source for the Foley story was a Republican House aide, who has been a registered Republican since he was able to vote."

UPDATE (10-06-06) Hmmmmmm...as I was saying...