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Bet that headline got your attention, no? Apparently it has the attention of all of Washington, DC, too:

In addition to explicit sexual language, former Congressman Mark Foley's Internet messages also include repeated efforts to get the underage recipient to rendezvous with him at night.

"I would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you," Foley said in one message obtained by ABC News.

The FBI says it has opened a "preliminary investigation" of Foley's e-mails. Federal law enforcement officials say attempts by Foley to meet in person could constitute the necessary evidence for a federal charge of "soliciting for sex" with a minor on the Internet.

In another message, Foley, using the screen name Maf54, appears to describe having been together with the teen in San Diego.

Go read the story over at ABCNews and you'll see this one quote is tame compared to some of the other emails and IM conversations that have been uncovered. This is some seriously sickening stuff here.

But the White House, apparently, disagrees. Tony Snow:

“I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.”

Minimizing the importance of this seems to me to be precisely the wrong strategy. ABC's "The Note" sums this up perfectly:

Here's how one senior Democratic aide summed up the Foley situation this morning for The Note: "The R's desperately want this to be about whether or not they knew of the sexually explicit e-mails/I.M.'s.

"Most parents we talked to over the weekend (including my own conservative R mom) feel the issue is that the R's were given and ignored a huge warning with the first set of e-mails."

"Had there been an investigation at that time, the sexually explicit emails may have been uncovered. But, Members lost that opportunity when the R's chose to protect Foley instead of those kids."

The Old Media and the liberal bloggers share that attitude, and Republican strategists know it.

The Republican Party has finally met a scandal it cannot spin. After 25+ years of running as the party of family and moral values, technicalities aren't going to save them, because moral values at their core are supposed to transcend technicalities. That was, you might recall, the essence of the outrage over Clinton's finger-wagging denial.

The Republican Party is the majority party. The Congressman in question is a member of their majority. Republican leadership was warned on more than one occasion about his behavior. Worse, the leadership knew enough about his behavior to warn others. And yet they did nothing to protect the children that had been entrusted to their care. That's a fact no technicality could ever possibly explain away.

This scandal strikes at the very core of the narrative the Republican Party has built over the past quarter century. If it were an isolated incident, one Congressman and one moment, it would likely pass without much notice. But it is not. The party's leaders knew, and yet they did nothing.

Go read the emails, and then imagine how they will play in middle America. People won't need to know any details beyond them. For once, it really is all about the children.

UPDATE: The chattering classes are losing it (Tip o' the Cap: Kos):