Check This Out

This is incredible:

NRCC chief Tom Reynolds -- who's supposed to be spending all his time helping other GOP Reps keep their jobs -- is now losing by an eye-opening 15 points to Dem challenger Jack Davis, according to a new Zogby International poll done for the Buffalo News. The poll shows Davis leading with 48% of likely voters, to 33% for Reynolds -- a lead that has steadily widened over the last 10 days. The poll also found that of the substantial majority following Foleygate, 57 percent disapproved of Reynolds' handling of it, while only 25 percent approved.

And it gets better: TPM Muckraker has this:

According to Newsweek, Fordham, then Foley's chief of staff, approached Scott Palmer after Foley's now-infamous drunken visit to the House page dorm. But most significantly, Fordham says that after the meeting, Palmer told him that he'd "informed the Speaker" about the problem -- and this was "sometime in 2002 or 2003."

My question is this: if the GOP leadership in the House knew about Foley's status as a sexual predator for all those years -- and it appears that they did -- then why did they decide to cover it up for as long as they did? Why not just get Foley to retire? That would have been the easy thing to do. From what I hear, Foley's district is a Republican stronghold, meaning that they could have gotten Foley to quietly retire and then easily keep the seat in question.

Indeed, it has been widely reported that Foley was thinking about retiring from Congress this year until NRCC chief Tom Reynolds -- the same G.O.P. congressman who is now behind by 15 points in his own district -- actually urged Foley to seek reelection! Reynolds did this even though he was aware of Foley's sleazy e-mails to the 16-year-old page. No wonder he is losing so badly back at home.

This makes no sense to me, unless there is a lot more to this story that we haven't heard yet. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not surprised that the GOP tried to cover up this whole thing. That's standard operating procedure for them. What surprises me is that they decided to cover it up when there appears to have been a much easier way out.

UPDATE: ABC's This Week, with the help of Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel, did a great job this morning of addressing the above-referenced issues. Congressman Reynolds was supposed to be on the program, but he cancelled. I guess he's too busy making campaign commericals which blame Hastert for everything.