Dick Polman's American Debate: Hastert seeks shelter with Rush, but it's raining too hard: "With top officials in the “family values” party now calling each other liars, is it any wonder that clear-headed conservatives are fearing a political debacle? Hastert might not have fared so easily if he had sat down today with Rich Lowry of the National Review:
“The fundamental problem congressional Republicans are experiencing now is that they have almost no moral capital left after the last two years. Again and again, when given the choice to reform their practices or do little or nothing, they always picked the latter. On travel, on Abramoff, on earmarking—you name it. The impression they always gave was that the integrity of the institution and the public interest had to take a back-seat to their own convenience.
“They wanted to squeak by this year on gerrymandering, negative ads, and money, and just might have succeeded—had nothing more gone wrong. Well, now it has and people feel confirmed in what they always suspected: that it is unable to police its own practices and is full of people who don't follow the same rules as the rest of us. This is deadly.'"
