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From Time magazine:

Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left. The epitaph for the movement that started when Newt Gingrich and his forces rose from the back bench of the House chamber in 1994 may well have been written last week in the same medium that incubated it: talk radio. On conservative commentator Laura Ingraham’s show, the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in history explained why he would not resign despite a sex scandal that has produced a hail of questions about his leadership and the failure to stop one of his members from cyberstalking teenage congressional pages. “If I fold up my tent and leave,” Dennis Hastert told her, “then where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we’d have no ability to fight back and get our message out.”

That quiet admission may have been the most damning one yet in the unfolding scandal surrounding Florida Congressman Mark Foley: holding on to power has become not just the means but also the end for the onetime reformers who in 1994 unseated a calcified and corrupted Democratic majority.

In explaining why he would not resign, Hastert also explains why he did nothing about Foley.

After the 2004 elections, Speaker Hastert declared that no bill would get a vote in the House, no matter how many elected representatives supported it, unless a majority of the Republicans supported it.

Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year’s intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if “the majority of the majority” supports them.

It’s never been about good government, or the American people, or decency or honor — or any other virtue — so far as this bunch of rubber-stamp Republicans have been concerned. It’s never been about the Ten Commandments, or the Bible, or our “Christian nation.” The only thing these guys worship — the only thing — is power. Getting it and keeping it has governed — and still governs — their every move.