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An unwholesome start

• James Westhead
• 3 Oct 06, 03:51 PM

How bad can it get? For the Republicans, could the first day of the mid-term election campaign really have been any worse? Well perhaps if they were caught sending sexually explicit emails to underage children and then trying cover it up. Whoops... That is what former congressman Mark Foley and his party's leadership are actually accused of.

When confronted with the unwholesome internet messages Mr Foley had sent to teenagers, the disgraced representative resigned and checked himself into the current refuge of choice for scandal-struck politicians - the .

The big political question - as with any major scandal - is who will have to resign next to make it all go away? One possible GOP lightning rod is the House speaker, . It is he who seems to have been alerted to Mr Foley's peculiar behaviour some months earlier, failed to act on it, then denied he knew about it, then admitted he did but lamely defended his inaction. In the words of a stinging editorial from this morning, "Mr Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation…. that must examine his own inept performance." Not exactly a vote of confidence from a conservative Republican paper.

Even more alarming for Republicans is the possibility of more e-mail revelations . This was hinted at last night by ABC investigative reporter , who broke the original Foley-gate story. He said that he'd been contacted by a large number of other "pages" - the teenagers who help out in Congress - with further allegations against other members.

Much of it will turn out to be uncorroborated 'noise', but there's no question the whole of Washington is churning around the clock with rumours and anxieties about where - and who - this sleazy scandal will strike next. Perhaps day two could turn out even worse than day one after all.

James Westhead is a Washington correspondent for ´óÏó´«Ã½ News.