The End of a Revolution

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But the Foley scandal is making it difficult for the party to look the other way. Last week some conservatives went so far as to insinuate that Foley proves that every gay person is a pedophile waiting to happen. "You don't need 'gaydar' to understand he has certain dispositions," Utah Congressman Chris Cannon told the Deseret News. Televangelist Pat Robertson recommended that G.O.P. leaders simply explain the situation this way: "Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do."

The resignations of Foley and Fordham sparked fears that other gay Republicans would also soon be forced out of both their closets and their jobs. "Kirk is the fall guy," says gay-rights activist Hilary Rosen. "It's going to be open season on gay Republicans. It's the right wing's perfect storm. They never wanted gays in their party anyway."

RULING WITH AN IRON FIST

Oddly enough, it was a sex scandal in 1998 that brought Hastert from obscurity to the Speaker's chair in the first place. Gingrich had been ousted because his brand of fiery leadership had become such a drag on the party that it lost seats rather than gained them amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But his anointed successor, Robert Livingston of Louisiana, suddenly backed out amid revelations of an extramarital affair. That's when the party turned to Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach whose affability and low-key demeanor seemed to guarantee calmer times ahead. He was, after all, the man who said he was too humble to brag about being humble.

And yet the way the House has operated under Hastert has been anything but humble. He quickly came to be viewed as little more than a genial front for then majority leader Tom DeLay, whose nickname--the Hammer--pretty much summed up his leadership touch. "There has been no institutional rule, means, norm or tradition that cannot be set aside to advance a partisan political goal," says Brookings Institution political scientist Thomas Mann, co-author of the recently published book whose title describes Congress as The Broken Branch. In 2003, instead of fashioning a compromise that might woo a few Democrats, Hastert and DeLay held what was supposed to be a 15-min. vote open for three full hours as they squeezed the last Republican votes they needed to pass a bill to provide an expensive prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. Far more than in the past, they brought bills to the floor with no chance of amendment and allowed the normal appropriations process to be circumvented so that pet projects could be funded without scrutiny. When DeLay faced indictment by a Texas grand jury, Hastert changed the Republican rules so that DeLay could stay on as leader--though in the ensuing outcry, he had to reverse himself. Hastert was successful, however, in purging the ethics committee of its chairman and two Republican members who had reprimanded DeLay for misconduct. Stretching the limits of arcane House rules and shuffling committees around may not seem like earthshaking offenses, but they are the same type of procedural strangleholds and power plays that the G.O.P. had hoped to excise from the body politic 12 years ago.