The thing about Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig (R-Idaho) that’s been bothering me the most is the way he’s been treated by his own party. Odds are good that he needs to be changing his nickname from “Wide Stance” to “Last Chance”. His days may be numbered to the point of being hours, certainly this would a prime Friday News Dump with a long weekend coming.
On second thought yeah, I know. “Sympathy for the Devil” and all. He’s a hypocritical self-hating Gooper closet case. Any United States Senator who gives a press conference to announce to the world that he’s not gay…is gay. You’re not fooling anybody. But being a closet case isn’t a crime. Soliciting sex in a public restroom is a crime, but not anywhere close to the scale of, say, the massive public corruption and graft charges facing Sen. Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens (R-Alaska).
Now, keep in mind the reasons why ol Larry is being shown the door here, according to hisgood buddy Mitt:
“I think at this stage, the right course is for him to make this decision looking at his own conscience, talking to the people of Idaho, talking to his colleagues in the Senate,” Romney told CNN’s John King in South Carolina. “I’m not one of those. I’m going to let him make that decision.”
Sure Mitt, but you want him gone. You’re not fooling anyone either.
His distinguished colleagues in the Senate are much more direct:
On Wednesday, three Republican lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, called on Craig to resign.
Their statements came a day after Craig made his first public statement about pleading guilty to a disorderly conduct charge relating to allegations the Idaho Republican solicited sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.
“I believe that he pleaded guilty, and he had the opportunity to plead innocent,” said McCain, of Arizona. “So, I think he should resign. My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime you shouldn’t serve.”
“Sen. Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator. He should resign,” said Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.
Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan added: “The voters of Idaho elected Sen. Craig to represent their state and will decide his future in 2008 should he fail to resign.
“However, he also represents the Republican party, and I believe he should step down, as his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator.”
He’s being served up on a platter for his “crimes.” The reasons given are of course “conduct unbecoming a Senator” and “pleading guilty to a crime” but the real reason he’s being shown the door has been the fact he’s gay, and the GOP is violently hostile to gays, period. They are to be used as a cudgel to enforce “morality” at best case and purged from the party at worst, and nobody in the GOP deserves any sympathy for that systemic bigotry and hatred.
And while that’s a huge problem, my real issue is this: Some have even gone so far on the right to accuse Craig of hypocrisy on being a “values” candidate and are trying to shame him out of office. To these people, allow me to beat you over the head with the actions of one Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.
Stevens downplayed the current FBI investigation, which included a raid of his home while he was still in Washington. He also added some new, if sketchy, information to the public record.
maybe you don’t know that, but I have been involved in them, and we weathered the storms,” Stevens said.
Stevens said this time around he doesn’t know if he’s the target of the investigation.
“I’m not sure I’m a target yet. I’ve not been told I’m a target. But as a practical matter, the situation — I shouldn’t have answered that question either,” Stevens said. “I was not a target of those other investigations, is what I was saying.”
Whatever the case now, Stevens said he will be the same senator he has been for Alaska.
“I am focused and effective,” Stevens said. “I think it’d be very difficult to detract any senator from doing his job when he’s in Washington.”
So while Alaskans wonder where the public corruption probe will end, Stevens seems to have said all that he’s going to say about it.
Yeah, let’s look at Ted here. “I’ve been involved in other investigations in my 39 years,” he says. Well gee, that makes me like the guy, 40 years in the Senate and he’s facing a major bribery and corruption charge, and there are of course zero calls for him to step down from McCain or Norm Coleman.
Let’s review the major fucking malfunction of the GOP.
Lewd behavior in an airport bathroom: Grounds for resignation.
Having your home doubled in size by a contractor in an obvious graft scheme: Perfectly fine.
Touching a cop’s foot in the crapper: Out the door, you pervert.
Giving aforementioned contractor services company a $170 million dollar no-bid contract in an area they have zero experience in: A-OK.
Where’s the outrage against Ted Stevens? What the hell is wrong with a group of people that will force you to lose your job because you touched a cop’s foot in a bathroom, and will let millions in graft and kickbacks walk scot-free? If you want to know why people thing the GOP is a bunch of repugnant bigoted jagoffs, you have no further to look than the treatment of Larry Craig versus that of Ted Stevens.
We’ve got a party that will give one of their own the heave-ho for bathroom shenanigans, but four decades of pork, graft, corruption, scandal, and payola? You get to keep your job through 8 presidential administrations.
Jagoffs. All of them.