Republican leaders in Congress knew about Foley’s behavior.

One of my biggest pet peeves in the world of politics is when a politician is so hypocritical that it becomes almost comical when they get caught in one of their hypocrisies (if not for the seriousness of the situation). Take a look, for example, at Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida.

Foley was a chairman on the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. He helped write much of the legislation that we know of today regarding sexual predators on the Internet. But now, it’s been discovered that Foley himself has solicited underage Congressional pages through online cyber-sex. The man even had cyber-sex while the House floor was in the middle of a vote.

Don’t misread what I am saying to you: I think that the legislation he promoted to catch pedophiles is great use of our governmental tools to protect those who need the protection most. But I also think it is highly hypocritical of the Republican Party to claim that they are the party of moral values when one of their own is exchanging dirty messages with underage congressional pages. Especially after Republican leaders in Congress knew about Foley’s behavior.

This is what we know so far: in the fall of last year, the page involved discussed with his representative from Louisiana, Rodney Alexander, lewd conversations that he and Foley had shared. The Louisiana representative then forwarded this information to the chairman of the page program who then told Foley to stop all conversations with the page (similar conversations with other pages allegedly date back to 2001).

In the spring of this year, Alexander then brought the problem to the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Rep. Tom Reynolds. He in turn delivered the news to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who did nothing about the problem. Hastert today says he did not “explicitly recall” the conversation, though he also does not refute that it happened.

Pardon me for being blunt, but that is inexcusable. For the House Speaker to belong to the party that claims to have moral superiority while simultaneously doing nothing to remove Foley — a pervert preying on teens — from his position as chair of the Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children is nothing short of hypocrisy.

It is clearly a political maneuver, meant to preserve the party’s seat under Foley at the expense of teenage victims in the page program. There was no concern for the teen involved — the only concern for Hastert was how to retain Republican control in the House of Representatives.

What’s even more disgusting is the group of people who choose to defend Hastert’s cowardice. People like Newt Gingrich. The former Speaker claims that Republican leaders had the proper convictions to keep Foley as the head of the Caucus because “they would have also been accused of gay bashing (if they had removed Foley).”

That is outrageous. Gingrich inaccurately claims that gay relationships and relationships between an adult and a minor are the same if the latter involves tow people of the same sex. This is like comparing a conventional straight relationship with a relationship between a 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl.

There is no excuse for how Republican congressional leadership reacted to this Foley debacle. They had a man who they knew was conversing sexually with underage teenage boys lead a caucus meant to prevent sexual predators from doing the very same thing. Foley has resigned for his misconduct. But what of the leaders who allowed him to stay in his leadership role? Will they ever be held accountable?

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