Won't Get Foley'd Again

Nick Gillespie | October 6, 2006

What's being said about the big campaign issues as candidates jockey for an advantage going into Nov. 7?

asap has brought together the voices of three bloggers from across the political spectrum, giving them an opportunity to sound off, in IM chats, on a major election issue each Thursday until Election Day.

This week's topic: the role of political ethics in campaign 2006.

The participants:

-- Judd Legum, editor of ThinkProgress.org, a progressive blog run by the Center for American Progress in Washington

-- Edward Morrissey, who runs the conservative Captain's Quarters blog

-- Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of the libertarian journal Reason and blogger on the publication's Web site, Hit and Run

Note from the editor: In some cases, comments that participants sent at the same time have been reordered to make more logical sense. Also note that capitalization and punctuation of the original chat have been preserved. And in order to preserve the participants' privacy, their screen names have been replaced with ... their actual names.

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asap: Everyone is still talking about Mark Foley's e-mails and instant messages. It makes for a great news story line, but should the former congressmen's indiscretions figure into voters' decisions on Nov. 7?

Nick Gillespie: yes absolutely.

Edward Morrissey: absolutely

Gillespie: or perhaps more important, the reaction and response of the gop leadership should be a big issue.

Morrissey: I believe that ethics forms a vital part of voter evaluation, over a broad range of issues.

Gillespie: both john boehner and dennis hastert have acted pretty poorly