Heads are flying, and Republicans run in opposite directions

In less than one week, the bottom has fallen out of the Republicans' hopes of holding onto both chambers of Congress.  The Mark Foley (R-FL) scandal that broke last Friday is sending shockwaves through Capitol Hill, forcing vulnerable Republican House incumbents to abandon their senior leadership and go their separate ways in the final four and a half weeks of the campaign.

And now there is late word that Dennis Hastert will likely resign before this time next week.  On the MSNBC show Countdown with Keith Olbermann, correspondent David Shuster said he spoke with a number of House Republicans, all of whom said that by this time next week Dennis Hastert will no longer be the Speaker.  Quite simply, he is being forced out by his party because of the fact that Hastert knew about the Foley emails for two years, and was inconsistent in responding to the charges.

But it's not just Dennis Hastert.  Tom Reynolds (R-NY), Chairman of the NRCC, is in hot water for also knowing about the emails and keeping them under partisan wraps.  Adding insult to injury, Reynolds is refusing to return $100,000 that Mark Foley donated to the NRCC earlier this summer.  And then during a press conference, Reynolds intentionally used about a dozen children as a photo-op, creating an angry buzz even among conservative bloggers.  Also at that press conference, Reynolds managed to deflect blame onto Hastert.

Page Board head John Shimkus is trying to defend himself as well, but will have a harder time in doing so because he secretly kept the information about Foley from the ranking Democrat on the board -- proving once and for all that this was a partisan cover-up.  Meanwhile, federal prosecutors are warning the Republican leadership not to delete any of the electronic communications, some of which are on the official Congressional Record.  Even with former Speaker Newt Gingrich coming to Hastert's defense, as are most conservative talk-radio personalities, mainstream America is outraged.

All of this chaos led Marc Sandalow of the San Francisco Chronicle to come to the most rational conclusion: there is no way that Dennis Hastert can survive much longer and maintain his Speaker position.  Even many constituents in Hastert's district want him to step down, such as this one:

"I don't see how they can say that hedidn't know about it now cause it sounds like two of his closestassociates are saying that they gave him fair warning," says Hastertconstituent Randy Blecha.

But there is an even more obvious reason why Hastert won't last much longer.  In U.S. House races all over the country, Democratic challengers are demanding that their Republican opponents come out and call for Hastert's resignation.  This will likely create a domino effect of opposition to Hastert within his own party.  Democratic House candidates Darcy Burner Peter Goldmark in Washington state, for example, sent letters to their Republican opponents asking them to get rid of Hastert.

So who will replace Dennis Hastert?  It likely won't be House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).  Last Friday, Boehner told the Washington Post that he was informed about the emails, only to quickly change his mind a few days later.  NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds, as I mentioned above, is also part of the scandal.  So who is left?  According to emails that were sent to me by two Republican Congressional aides in Washington, it looks like Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-CA) and Henry Hyde (IL) are the two front-runners to become the next Speaker of the House.

Down in Mark Foley's district, many Republican voters say they will not vote in that race -- giving the edge to Democratic challenger Tim Mahoney:

Voters like Braun, who cast their ballots for Foley two years ago,face what could be an emotional issue in the voting booth. Foley's nameremains on the ballot, so anyone wanting to cast a vote for hisreplacement, state Rep. Joe Negron, will have to mark the ballot forFoley.

"I won't do it. I won't vote for him," said Braun. "I'll just skip that race."

In my view, unless Bush miraculously finds Osama bin Laden or starts launching air strikes on Iran or North Korea, we are looking at a likely Democratic landslide in at least the House and maybe the Senate as well.