Dennis Hastert will be remembered for three things:
1. Becoming an unlikely, almost accidental Speaker of the House who was little more than Tom Delay's ventriloquist dummy.
2. As a co-conspirator of the historic failure that was the Bush presidency.
3. Originator of the Hastert Rule.
But now that #3 has become associated with the Republican Shutdown of 2013, Denny would like to remove that item from his biography. Being remembered as a stooge for George W. Bush and Tom Delay? No problem. But having his name come up in connection with the House of Boehner and his Teabagger puppet masters. Uh, no thanks, says Dennis...
Denny Hastert would prefer that we all stop invoking his name in justification of John Boehner's destruction of party and country:
"There really wasn't a 'Hastert Rule,' " the longest-serving Republican speaker, who is now a lobbyist and consultant, told National Journal in a phone interview Wednesday evening...
"That was a misnomer at a press conference. One time they asked me about immigration legislation, why don't I just use Democrat votes? I said, well I'm never going to not have a majority of my own party go along with me. If you do that, then you're not using your own policy. And [the press] blew that up as the Hastert Rule. The Hastert Rule, really, was: If you don't have 218 votes, you didn't bring the bill to the floor," he explained..."There is no Hastert Rule, no."
Good stuff! But guess what? Like all of the "mainstream" Republicans of today's congress, who play grown-ups but do nothing to stand up to the Teabagger extremists, Hastert thinks Boehner should probably not break the non-existent Hastert Rule:
Still, when asked if Boehner should try to pass a clean CR by breaking the rule heretofore known by Hastert's name, the former speaker said his successor should not. "I would be very careful with Speaker Boehner; I would make sure that he had a majority of his conference on board with him," he said.
Which should be another reminder to everyone: the problem is not the Tea Party. Those losers have always been around and always will. The problem is a Republican Party that has given up its integrity, given up any pretense of a substantive agenda, and is doing nothing more than selling itself to the highest bidders.