The Foley Mess

The last House GOP contract at TradeSports traded at 46. That’s down a hefty 11 points or so from its recent high. Clearly, the Foley scandal is really taking its toll.

Of course, the simple reason for this is that instead of needing 15 seats, the Dems need 14. (Make that 13 because they’re going to lose Tom Delay’s seat.)

The bigger issue here is whether there’s any GOP House leadership cover-up. If so, it will be an unmitigated disaster.

There are two stages to this mess: The first is the email which didn’t look that bad. But then came release of the instant messages. Those messages spelled disaster for Foley.

So, it may be that when Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY) first told Hastert last fall, he knew about the emails but not the instant messages. But this is still tricky in terms of what did the GOP leadership know and when did they know it.

All that said, it is possible that additional names will surface. There is no evidence of that yet, but Dems have had their sex related problems too. Ironically, it was the Republican House that passed Internet legislation that makes this a federal crime led by Foley and including good guys like Mike Pence.

But we will be watching the TradeSports action very carefully. We will also be watching the stock market to see if there’s any blowback on this front.