Shouldn’t influence? Agreed, unless you were voting for Mark Foley, which is no longer an option. But just like Bush’s poll numbers, it probably will.

The dark cloud that is hanging over this election is not Foley, it’s George Walker Bush. It’s his style, his personal tics, that he branded the Minutemen "vigilantes," that he’s done everything he can to maintain an open border with Mexico, allowing them to continue a government policy of population dumping upon the United States. That he’s allowed this policy to continue, and moreover, told the American people that he’s trying to gain control of the border. Such deception, especially after Meirs, simply doesn’t cut it anymore with the base of the GOP. He’s lost them, it’s as Peggy Noonan wrote a few weeks ago, the American people have tuned him out, because in every single speech anymore, you already know beforehand what you’re going to get.

Remember how he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get rid of Card and McCellan.... He brought in Snow, but Snow hasn’t been able to change his overall communicative posture, although he’s been able to introduce a welcome change to the White House press briefings.

A very good man like Santorum is probably going to see his political career ruined, all because of the governing style of George Walker Bush. It’s a brutal price for him to pay, all because the Bush family has been determined to exhume Rockefeller Republicanism from the grave. The father and the son, rejected the victorious style and politics of Reaganism, and have done their level best to make Rockefeller Republicanism ascendant in the GOP. And for what, so that John Sununu, Warren Rudman, Andy Card, and others find a place at the White House. It’s surreal, absolutely surreal.

Well to be fair to all the millions of Americans who told the polsters they’ve been influenced, it’s not Foley who influenced them. It was the way they party handled, or didn’t handle Foley.

It’s always the cover-up.