Just a scant wo hours ago, this site was all "Foleygate-is-gonna-finally-take-down-the-GOP!!" all the time.
Now, its "OMG, North Korea has conducted a nuclear test so Foleygate is going to be knocked off the front pages and the GOP is gonna pick up seats!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!
By all that's holy, calm the FRAK down!!!
Did you all REALLY think there was not going to be ANY other news in the next 30 days which would play into the election? Did you REALLY think the Republicans would flounder around with no strategy to push back for the entire month? Did you REALLY expect Karl Rove not to have anything up his sleeve to roll out in the last four weeks? Did you REALLY think the world outside Foleygate was going to stop spinning and Foley-related developments were going to dominate the news every day, day in and day out for another four weeks....and always in our favor? Did you REALLY think we could all relax and not worry about going out to help our candidates win and help with GOTV efforts? Just sit back and send Mark Foley a "thank you" card for giving us back the House and Senate?
Let's take a deep breath and step back and look at what is really likely to happen.
Yes, North Korea has the bomb....but we've all known that since Bush the First was in office. Yes, they conducted a nuclear test to thumb their nose at us...Kim Jong Il is a crazy sonofabitch and he isn't afraid of Bush the Second....no surprise there.
Slowly but surely, the American people have come around to seeing how incompetent Bush foreign policy has been and I have faith that they are going to see how this is just another piece in the puzzle of "Yep, the world is less safe and Dubya doesn't have a clue how to turn that around."
But back to Foleygate - I think perhaps it might be a good thing for it to be on the back burner for a couple of days. Let Fordham speak his peace to the FBI and the House Ethics Committee (and let the subsequent leaks begin). Let Trandahl come forward and start telling his story. Let the reporters who we all know are chasing down the details of this do their work - do you really think ABC and the WaPo and the NYTimes are gonna pull anyone off Foleygate and say "Go get me a scoop on North Korea!!!"?
In other words, let the Foley story unfold behind the scenes for a few days, let the narrative firm up a bit. While the American is a lot smarter than we sometimes give them credit for.....they also have the collective attention span of a piss-ant. In a few days, folks will get tired of hearing about North Korea (the same way those outside DailyKOS are tired of hearing about 90% of the crap we talk about ad infinitum on here).
So before America gets Foley Fatigue, this break is actually a good thing. According to one of the polls released this weekend (Newsweek, I think), 80% of the public has been following this story closely -- they're not gonna forget about it and why its important. Faster than you think, they'll be bored with hearing about North Korea and be back googling Mark Foley before you know it. (And what an ugly mental image that is.)