Honestly, I trust Hastert only marginally more than I trusted Tom Foley. I'm concerned that if the issue does fade into the background, congress will quietly pass another AWB while nobody's paying attention.
And what I'm hearing from Hastert is that the Republican leadership is leaving that option open. Now should I credit him with political manipulation for speaking as he does, or should I take him at his word?
Did Bill Clinton say "This is a great step toward our goal of a totalitarian peoples' paradise" when the original AWB was passed?
To keep things under the radar screen, you don't say what you are actually doing. You say innocuous things that nobody can really interpret one way or the other, so the opposition can't use it for propaganda against you.
Politics is a game, it is not a religion. In religion there is only truth. In politics there is only winning or losing.
I would think "conservatives" would be tired of losing after 40 years of DEMONcRATS running circles around us, but I guess I am wrong.