The Foley scandal really is big

Recently I was talking to my friend on AIM and he is someone who normally does not talk about politics except very briefly. But on Tuesday he asked me what I thought about Mark Foley and he and I had a conversation about it, and he seemed to know as much about the scandal as I did. This is but one example that I have encountered that shows how big and damaging the Foley scandal really is to Republicans this year, especially in the race to win control of the House. This is something that ordinary people can understand and it makes Foley a poster boy for everything that has gone wrong over the past two years.

The latest poll in Reynolds' seat highlights the devastating impact that this story is having across the nation--

New York 25th: (surveyusa)

Tom Reynolds (R) - 45
Jack Davis (D) - 50

This is a seat that should be safe for the Republicans, but now its at best a tossup, and at worse another seat that the Democrats are likely to gain.

The other numbers are sheer agony:

In another SurveyUSA poll from October 4th, 80 percent of voters were aware of the scandal involving Mark Foley. When asked about whether the scandal would make them more likely to vote for Republican candidates or less likely, 9 percent said more likely and 44 percent said less likely. It is worth noting though that 47 percent said it would not affect their vote, and perhaps the one silver lining in this poll is that 56 percent either are more likely to back Republican candidates or don't care. However, this isn't very silver.

Moving on, when asked if Republican leaders did enough about the matter, 13 percent said they did enough and 79 percent said they didn't. When asked if Dennis Hastert should remain speaker, 30 percent said yes, 20 percent said he should resign his position, and 46 percent said he should resign from congress.

These are just agony for the Republicans, but there is more from Rasmussen--

According to a poll by Rasmussen, 61 percent believe that Foley was protected for years and only 21 percent believe that the leadership learned of the scandal last week. Once again this is devastating.

There is some good news, as I have mentioned briefly earlier--

According to SurveyUSA, 56 percent say that its either more likely that they will vote for Republican candidates this November or that it won't affect their vote. It means that there is a big bloc of undecideds who don't like this scandal one bit but might be persuaded to back Republican candidates if they felt that the alternative was unacceptable. However, as I said this isn't that much of a silver lining.