Speaker Hastert: 'Talk'...now we await the 'Walk'

An update to the post 'Congressman Mike Pence must be doing something right. Gets taken to the woodshed by Speaker Hastert'.

Robert Novak now writes that:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert is an old wrestler, and last Thursday night he used a classic move of his sport by quickly reversing positions. On behalf of the Republican leadership, Hastert went before his colleagues to embrace essentially the same package of spending [see: Republican Study Committe rises to Tom Delay's challenge] that two weeks earlier he had scourged conservative House members for proposing. The change was a matter of necessity rather than choice...

...On the floor of the House Friday, [Congressman] Pence issued a polite victory statement. "Some of us thought we should pay for the big cost of Hurricane Katrina by cutting big government," he said and adding that "we're beginning to do just that." However, speaking "on behalf of House conservatives," he said, "we are pleased but not content, we are encouraged but not satisfied" because the actual cutting will be harder than winning the debate. Pence sounded a little like Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" reaction to Mikhail Gorbachev.