Outing expedition

Politics: Liberal group and liberal press try to foment election-season angst among conservative Christian groups | John Dawson

In the wake of the Mark Foley page scandal, Wendy Wright certainly was surprised to hear that she was calling for House Speaker Denny Hastert to resign—especially since she said no such thing.

After Florida Congressman Mark Foley's resignation for sending inappropriate messages to male congressional pages, Democrats began calling for Hastert's resignation, saying he knew about Foley but did nothing to stop it. That's when Wright, president of Concerned Women for America (CWA), began receiving phone calls from other conservative Christian organizations asking if she really said Hastert needed to go. "We never even came close to that," Wright said.

Instead, reporters were apparently twisting Wright's words to fish for dissension among Christian conservatives. The journalistic gambit is similar to a police confession trick—convince other groups that CWA had been calling for Hastert's head and a reporter might induce them to really throw the House speaker under the bus.