Analysis: What Did GOP Know About Foley?

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., speaks to reporters with Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., right, who chairs a panel of lawmakers that oversees the House page program, rgarding the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., Monday, Oct. 2, 2006, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Hastert said Monday that no Republican leaders saw lurid Internet exchanges from former Rep. Mark Foley to pages and that he would have demanded the Florida Republican's expulsion if he had known about them. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke) (Lauren Victoria Burke - AP)

WASHINGTON -- In a twist on the old Watergate question, the Republican Party is struggling to answer: What did GOP leaders know of a congressman's suggestive exchanges with former pages, all teenage males, and when did they know it?

The truth could determine not only their own political futures but also whether the party can recover from the scandal surrounding former Republican Rep. Mark Foley _ and manage to remain in power after Nov. 7.

"I don't think this is so much about Foley as it is about the handling of this," Rick Davis, a Republican strategist, said Monday as the drama rocked the House GOP five weeks before midterm elections, much to Democrats' delight.

"The question becomes who's getting thrown overboard besides Foley to get this to go away," said Tony Fabrizio, another GOP consultant.

The six-term Florida congressman resigned abruptly on Friday after reports surfaced that he sent salacious electronic messages to teenage boys who had worked as House pages. The tawdry turn of events set off finger-pointing among House Republicans and overshadowed what the GOP had hoped would be a triumphant final work week highlighting the party's national security credentials before the campaign's homestretch.

Now, the Republican Party _ already facing an unfriendly political environment and the fallout from a new book critical of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war _ finds itself knocked even further off message and working to contain the political damage.

Punting on Monday, White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters: "The House has to clean up the mess, to the extent there is a mess."

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., denounced sexually explicit instant messages Foley is accused of sending in 2003 to teens as "vile and repulsive." He denied that House leaders had access to them until the instant messages surfaced in media reports Friday.

However, Hastert's staff and some Republicans in leadership, including Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House campaign effort, for months had been aware of an inappropriate 2005 e-mail exchange between Foley and a Louisiana teenage boy who once worked as a page. Reynolds said he also told Hastert. The speaker says he doesn't recall the conversation but also does not dispute Reynolds' account.

Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, also has known since the spring that Foley had contacted the teen, but a spokesman said the leader didn't know details of the contact.

GOP leaders are facing questions of a cover-up while Democrats across the country seize on the scandal, demanding an independent investigation and calling for some Republicans to resign their leadership posts.

Republican candidates, meanwhile, are distancing themselves from Foley and seeking inquiries. Some Republicans also are calling for accountability from GOP leaders who knew about some of Foley's reported behavior and failed to take action.