Putting himself ahead of his party and his constituents
By Dana R Pico Posted in Congress — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), convicted of misdemeanor disorderly conduct for soliciting a same-sex quickie in a public restroom, said that he would resign his seat on September 30th, if his guilty plea wasn't reversed. Yesterday the judge refused to vacate the guilty plea, and today Mr Craig is breaking his word, and, apparently, staying in the Senate.
This article from the Associated Press says that his Republican colleagues in the Senate have:
two unpleasant choices. They can resume pressuring him to leave, and risk being seen as disloyal politicians who go harder on alleged homosexual misdeeds than on heterosexual wrongdoings. Or they can basically ignore him for months, and endure more TV comics' taunts about a conservative senator convicted in a case involving public bathroom stalls.
Judging from comments in the first hours after Craig's announcement, Republican senators were unsure exactly where to land. Outright confrontation with Craig, however, seems unlikely.
But the problem isn't the misdemeanor conviction; the conviction is simply the symptom. The problem is that Larry Craig is a liar. I wrote previously:
- I don’t know exactly what Mr Craig’s problem is. He might be a Jim McGreevey-type, functionally bisexual but emotionally mostly homosexual, who married women as props to hide his homosexuality, or he might be a mostly heterosexual guy, who likes an occasional “down low” walk on the Wilde side, neither knowing nor caring to whom the various organs he is using belong, or he could be somewhere in the middle of all of that. But I do know that he’s lied to his wife and he’s lied to his constituents. We excoriated the 42nd President of the United States for that; we shouldn’t compromise our principles and give Larry Craig the benefit of a doubt we wouldn’t give Bill Clinton, simply because Mr Craig is a Republican.
Now Mr Craig has lied yet again, by going back on his promise to resign, which was followed by a promise to resign if the judge wouldn't let him withdraw his guilty plea. How many more lies is he going to tell?
He does, of course, have a perfectly legal right to stay in the Senate until his term expires. But the man has thrown away all remaining trust that there could be in his word. And he has demonstrated that he cares about Larry Craig far more than he cares about his party, his constituents or his word.
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Cross posted on Common Sense Political Thought.
Republicans should follow through on several statements that have been made since this all came out.
His support from the Idaho state party is gone from what I understand. They need to make it clear that there will be a primary challenger if he does not leave at the end of his term - preferably Lt. Gov. Risch. And they should start putting together polls (even if they are push polls) that would show Craig that he is dead in the water.
The NRSC should make good its pledge that there will be no assistance given to Craig should he run again. In fact, they should hint that they might help a primary challenger against him. That, combined with the state party, should at the very least put the kabosh on any thoughts of re-election.
Then the GOP needs to hammer away at Craig for going back on his word. He said he'd resign if he didn't get to withdraw the plea. Now he should make good. Second, the GOP needs to make it clear that, to the extent the underlying activities are an issue, it is not about homosexuality but the fact that Craig was charged with, and plead guilty to, a criminal offense. Had this been just a newspaper report of Craig's actions, or perhaps an accusation by someone Craig "met" in a similar situation - the GOP would have stood by him (as they have done with Vitter) - but that's not what we're talking about.
The simple fact is that the GOP needs to simply be willing to confront the lies that will be spewed by the media and others about this. Larry Craig does not make the entire Party a bunch of hypocrites. And he does not diminish the validity of the Party's platform and policy proposals on social issues.
The prevailing attitude on redstate seems to be that the distinction between the Craig and Vitter situations is as simple as the fact that Craig was arrested and Vitter wasn't. Given the fact that Vitter essentially admitted to his crime, I can't quite wrap my head around that position which, any way you slice it, is tantamount to admitting that you don't care at all about the crime, but only about the being unfortunate enough to get cuaght part.
For what it's worth, I think that at this point he should probably leave, but only because he made the mistake of saying that he would.
-exits
Senator Vitter at least didn't lie about it -- once he was caught, anyway. I wouldn't object if Mr Vitter said that he would resign on January 3, 2009, and give the voters of Louisiana the chance to elect another Republican, rather than give the Democrats a free seat through appointment.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Expulsion based on a misdemeanor? There's no prededent for that, and people like Gerry Studds and Barnmey Frank weren't expelled. It has always taken a lot to get expelled -- think Adam Clayton Powell -- and Senator Craig's actual crime hasn't reached that threshold.
The problem isn't really Mr Craig's misdemeanor conviction; the problem is that he is a liar -- and we know that the Senators can't expel people for that!
After all, if he's lied about leaving the Senate by September 30th and then lied about waiting until the judge ruled on his effort to withdraw his guilty plea (not to mention whatever self-deception is going on with regards to his sexual behavior), how can we believe Seen. Craig's word when he says he will not run again in 2008?
And how can he be truthfully saying that he can serve effectively in the Senate when nobody can trust his word?
Does he delight in putting the Republican party in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation"? If the Republicans force him out, they're accused of homophobia and being against gays. If they let him stay, then they're condoning corruption and misbehavior by their own members.
However, he has now provided the party with a way out of this media horns of a dilemma: pressing him to resign because he said he would, rather than focusing on his sexual proclivities.
And Rightly So!