Shortly after returning to his office from the Republican Leadership Caucus in the basement of Poon's Lobster House in Washington DC (about which I shall report shortly in a two part special on Fireside14.com), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert announced a news conference to be given from the steps of his office in Batavia, Illinois.
For six days the Speaker had been fighting a grueling battle against the liberal dominated press, which had stubbornly insisted on printing every single contradiction in Hastert's hundreds of explanations about his role in the Foley affair. Various rumors had been circulating about his health. He was, for example, said to be holed up in his palatial Plano estate in a dark room accompanied only by his two pet dogs and four hundred pounds of short ribs. Another rumor had him located at a night club called The Killing Fields in Kabul, Afghanistan, but this turned out to just be Senator Frist.
We were expecting the worst. But Denny positively bounded out to the speaker's platform, and I thought he looked damn good for a man who's been dead for five days....
But would he fall on his sword? That's what the 327 reporters were that were there were hoping. You could hardly see the Secret Service guys for all the reporters, hardly. We all lapsed into silence when The Coach cleared his throat and... spit out a chicken bone. But he cleared his throat again and launched into a bold and defiant speech that left not a dry eye in the house.
Of course, not everyone was crying for the same reason. There was laughter, there was frustration, there was rage, there was the full gamut of emotions that have been experienced by those who have been following the Coach's activities these past years. But this was Classic Coach. HE was not going to resign. HE was not going to be beaten by a scandal that after all was started by Democratic operatives who selfishly revealed the depths of his corruption just before an election. HE was going to stay the course and like another politician in another context, if he had to go down, then he was going to take the entire Republican Party down with him...for the good of the country.
Well, I wasn't about to argue with that. But there hasn't been as big a news conference announcing absolutely nothing since George W Bush's State of the Union Address where he vowed to send all steroid using ball players to Mars. We stood watching him in breathless fascination. Would he split in two before he sank, like the Titanic? Or would he just collapse in one piece before the big explosion like the Tower of Sauron.
But he just walked away. And even the Fox reporter had a look on her face like one gets when the rubber dog turd you thought your kid put on your shoe as a joke turns out to be real.
As the reporters packed up and tried to figure out just what the hell they would tell their editors, the Fox reporter of all people happened upon a man standing at the edge of the crowd. It was John Laesch, Hastert's Democratic opponent in the election that is coming in just thirty days. It's not surprising that she didn't see him earlier. He's a decent man and they aren't used to see decent politicians in the general vicinity of Hastert's office. Laesch is no "player". He's not even a party guy. He's basically just a normal American who's ashamed of the mess that the biggest suck up Congress in the history of the United States has made of this country and our rights and he's doubly ashamed, no, he's extremely pissed off that the leader of this circus freak show is his own elected representative. Laesch has put everything he has, everything he owns, and everything he is into this race. Up until 5 days ago Hastert hasn't even glanced at him, so confident has he been that the good people of the district would just would automatically vote for the jolly fat guy in the baseball hat whose picture hangs over the cash register of almost every business in the district that has been open for more five years. But the Coach has pissed in his last hat. His friends and neighbors might tolerate an insane war, massive pork, and the destruction of the Bill of Rights, but they draw the line at hairy satyrs IM humping page boys in the same halls that saw the footsteps of Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and even by god Ronnie Reagan himself. If Hastert gets any votes, it will be from people who are too shocked to believe what they are now hearing each and every day and are succumbing to the all too human reaction of trying to turn the clock back to when they still could look at Denny ride by on the big fire truck without throwing their coats over the children's heads. Laesch wants to beat him because if there ever was a man who needed beating, it is Dennis Hastert. And I think he is going to do it.
(Cross posted on Fireside14.com)