Posted by
Team Turk on Friday, October 06, 2006 5:23:41 PM
From the
Loft Blog:
[Dennis] Hastert’s resolve and his call for action appear to be resonating well with the Republican base. In the survey conducted by GOPUSA’s Grassroots Survey Team, members were asked whether Hastert should resign from his leadership position. Overnight, over 2,000 respondents indicated their confidence in the House speaker. Only 7% of the respondents said that Hastert should resign as speaker. 66% of the respondents said that Hastert should not step down. Another 26% said that it was too early in the investigation to say whether Hastert should resign or not.
Most respondents feel that although the House speaker and his staff may have had some knowledge of Foley’s contact with a congressional page, the speaker’s office did not have full information as to the explicit nature of the communications. When asked whether the Republican House leadership knew about Foley’s activities and failed to act appropriately to stop them, 41% said the leadership “knew about contact with pages but not to the extent that has now been reported.” Only 22% feel that the leadership “knew to a large extent and were negligent for not taking action.”
Respondents overwhelmingly feel that the Foley controversy will hurt Republicans in the November elections. 70% of respondents felt that it was likely or very likely that the controversy would hurt Republican prospects, while 30% of respondents indicated that it was unlikely or somewhat unlikely to hurt Republicans.