President Bush continues to lend his support to embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert. At a campaign event last night in Chicago Mr. Bush made his first public appearance with Hastert since the beginning of the Mark Foley Congressional page scandal.
It was the first order of business: The president and the speaker standing conspicuously close together for about two minutes as the cameras flashed away. The joint appearance is the president’s latest show of support for Hastert as he continues to wrestle with the Foley scandal. The president went on to repeatedly layer on his praise, mentioning the speaker about half a dozen time during his half hour speech.
He has delivered results for the people. This country is better off with Denny Hastert as the speaker and it’ll be better off when he’s the speaker the next legislative session, Bush declared.
In his half hour speech, the president touched on a range of issues, but focused most heavily on national security.
“One of the terrible lessons of September the eleventh is that oceans can no longer protect us. And therefore it is essential that the United States treat threats seriously before they come home to hurt us,” he says.
Hastert sponsored the fundraiser for candidates in two of Illinois’ most contentious house races, State Senator Peter Roskam in the sixth district and David McSweeney in the eighth district
In recent weeks some other candidates have cancelled campaign events with the speaker as the Foley scandal continues to develop.