In an editorial this morning denouncing GOP elites for feeding the Mark Foley scandal, the Wall Street Journal refers to the controversy as the “Foley wilding”:

And so with an election weeks away and its troops already at the edge of the cliff, the Republican elites decided to jump into the sea over Mr. Foley.

We doubt that Messrs. Boehner, Wildmon, Perkins, Bauer and Weyrich will feel as politically cleansed as they seem to be this week if they wake up November 8 to a House run by Ms. Pelosi and Messrs. Rangel, Murtha, Dingell, Waxman, Obey and Frank. And if the pundits are right, the Foley wilding may even give them a Harry Reid Senate.

In case you’re not familiar with the term “wilding,” it was popularized in 1989 to refer to the alleged gang rape of a jogger in Central Park by a group of teens from Harlem (whose convictions were vacated in 2002). One blogger quotes this definition from the Oxford English Dictionary: “The action or practice by a gang of youths of going on a protracted and violent rampage in a street, park, or other public place, attacking or mugging people at random along the way; also, an instance of this.”

Bipartisan outrage over the failure to prevent a Congressman from engaging in inappropriate contact with minors, or the equivalent of a violent rampage by a gang of youths — you be the judge!