Bye Denny?

No, please stay!

From Fox (of all places …)

House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.

“The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,” a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. “And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss.”

I think that’s about right. No matter what bamboozlement they try to feed to Drudge.

One of the many funny things about Denny Hastert’s silly lies about Democrats being responsible for his scandal is this: is this really their position? If the Democrats would have just focused on the real issues instead of blowing the whistle on our caucus pedophilia, we could have gone back to the real business of passing laws and molesting teenagers! Let’s focus on the people’s business! Oh, and also our funny business. If it weren’t for George Soros I could be cranking out a few good IMs right now!

Oops. Hastert contradicts what ally Shimkus said just yesterday.

Stung by the Foley scandal, Rep. Tom Reynold’s (R-NY) already-faltering campaign is slipping into a hole. How deep a hole? He’s calling on Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to help pull him out.

Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) two ideas for cutting runaway government spending: a) Cut farm subsidies and b) DHS funding for security measures at buildings which house Jewish organizations.

Lieberman: Let’s stand by Hastert in his hour of need.

Late Update: There’s even video.

We’ve got a small staff at TPM, four full-time employees including me. So perhaps you can help us with something. Over at Election Central, I’ve tasked Greg Sargent with finding me that elusive quarry — the Republican member of Congress who will say on the record that he’s going to vote for Denny Hastert for Speaker next January if the Republicans maintain their majority. We were working on this and, surprisingly, we just couldn’t get anybody to get back to us.

So we’ve started a list in this post over at Election Central of different campaigns and congressional offices we’ve called. As you can see, the only member we’ve been able to get a comment out of was Rob Simmons (R-CT). And his comment was ‘no comment’. So you can see it’s pretty slim pickings. All the rest have refused to return calls. Gerlach in Pennsylvania. Sweeney in New York. The Count in Indiana. Nancy Johnson in Connecticut. No dice. None of them are returning calls.

So if you’d like to lend us a hand, you can call them and see if you can get an answer. We’ll be adding to the list tomorrow.

Okay, we’ve found a member of the House who’s going on the record saying he’ll vote for Denny Hastert for Speaker next year if the Republicans retain the majority. Rep. Ray Lahood, of Illinois’ nearby 18th district. Apparently he announced his support tonight on Hardball.

Now, anyone outside of Illinois?

Okay, we’ve got an answer for Rep. Dave Reichert (R) of Washington’s 8th district. He says he doesn’t want to take a stand on Hastert until after an investigation has been completed.

Reichert is a freshman and he’s in a really competitive race. So as of now we’re still looking for any rep. who’s in any sort of real race who’s willing to say that they’re going to vote for Hastert as Speaker or Minority Leader.

Here’s a picture of Reichert and Foley maxing and relaxing with Honeywell CEO Dave Cote back in happier days when everyone was still on speaking terms.

Just for future reference let’s nip one pre-meme in the bud.

There are already a number of Republicans arguing that the election tide was beginning to turn their way before Hurricane Foley came ashore last Friday.

Not so.

At some point I’ll write in greater detail about this. But I believe statistics, as well as observation, will show the claim is simply false.

Republicans and the president did get a modest but real boost in late August and the first couple weeks of September. By the middle of September it was reasonable to ask, as I think Charlie Cook did, whether the small GOP uptick was just a blip or the beginning of trend that would grow toward the November election.

From that point on though things began to change. It was observable in the polls. And it was most due, I believe, to the issue of Iraq moving back to center stage of news, with stories like the hidden NIE, the first hints of the Woodward and other stories. Also playing a role was the GOP infighting over the torture bill and the Ney indictment.

Even as bleak as things look at the moment for the GOP we don’t know what will happen on November 7th. And it’s important for everyone to realize that is not just rhetoric. It’s the uncomfortable truth. We don’t. But whatever happens on November 7th, the GOP wasn’t on the upswing before Foley. They were back on the skids.