Being a first time poster, I hope I don't get excoriated, but I had to chime in on this.
I agree whole heartedly that Foley deserves everything he gets from this. The problem I'm seeing is the partisan bickering over it. Yes, he is a Republican, but looking over the history here it become obvious to most casual observer that the Democrats are the worse offenders.
Including Foley, not only do the Democrats have more offenders (14 vs 9) but they continually re-elect their offenders. Every one of the Democrats offenders, if they ran, were chosen in their party's primary and 10 of 11 of these were elected in the general election to return to office. On the Republican side, 5 of 9 that ran won their primary re-election bids and only 1 of those actually won the general election - and the one resigned shortly after re-enter office. If you count up the years of continued service after re-election between the two parties you can determine a total of 61 years of continued representation by Democrat offenders vs less than half a year of continued service by Republican offenders. Gerry Studs, who even admitted to relations with a 17 year old boy, was re-elected and served 12 more years in the House.
I'm not using this to defend Foley, but to show the hyprocrisy of the Democratic political response to this. Sexual scandals of all flavors are not limited to any one party, but the Democrats continually allow their offenders to continue to hold office and even elevate them to positions of leadership.
You're so right. Instead of flagellating themselves about this, the Pubbies ought to go on the offensive and point out exactly whoat you've pointed out, plus mentioning Bill Cinton and Teddy, "the Swimmer" Kennedy.