Foley Fallout: The Spin Wars

Fallout from the Foley affair continue (while ABC continues to break new ground by reporting that Foley discussed an in-person rendezvous with a page), as the Hill and the campaign committees shift into full-tilt spin wars today:

• Hastert returns to the Hill to show he's in charge, escalating his rhetoric to create some distance between him and Foley ("The speaker is outraged and disgusted with Congressman Mark Foley's actions," a spokesman told CongressDaily)
  
  
• Dems try to link every Republican to the House leadership's handling of the issue. From Hotline's Dem Playbook: "Pay no heed to the distinction between the e-mails and IMs. There's no evidence (yet) that any Republican leaders knew about Foley's cybersex IMs. There's plenty of evidence that they knew how uncomfortable the 'overly friendly' e-mails made at least one page. So the Dems will press the GOP on what they knew about the former and will constantly, in their press releases, refer to the 'GOP's knowledge of the sexually explicit e-mails.'"
  
  
• Republicans demand full investigation. Hotline's Republican Playbook: "The first play is to repudiate the conduct and demand that the entire investigative apparatus of the federal government, from the senior-most agents in the FBI to the lowliest computer crime techs at the Secret Service -- rush to investigative Foley."