Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Quit Stalling and Resign, Sen. Larry Craig

Sometimes, I don't understand Republicans. When Newt Gingrich was bashing Bill Clinton, demanding his resignation for cheating on his wife with that woman, Miss Lewinski, he was cheating on his own wife at the time. He even admitted it, divorced his wife and married the woman. How virtuous. When Republican representative Henry Hyde, then head of the House Judiciary Committee, was in charge of deciding whether to pursue Clinton's impeachment, he failed to disclose that he was guilty of the same indiscretion years earlier, even worse because it went on for four years and the intimacy went deeper, if you know what I mean. Both he and the woman he had the affair with were married at the time. When the Internet magazine, Salon.com broke the news, he dismissed it as one of his "youthful indiscretions."

One of my Republican friends told me then, "Well, at least he didn't do it in the White House." I responded by asking him what difference does it make who it is or where it's done. If it's a preacher or a deacon, whether in the church sanctuary or in the back seat of a car, cheatin' is cheatin' and that is immoral.

Cheating isn't my main point here, although Sen. Craig is married. It is the hypocrisy inherent in politics and it seems to be reeking more than a public mens' room from within the Republican party. From Bill Clinton's self-made problem and the self-righteous attempts by cheating Republicans to chop off his head, to Mark Foley and holier than thou religious icons, there are just too many conservative Republicans getting themselves into moral dilemmas. Gay and straight. What bothers me most is the double standard many Republican voters display. Reverse any of the above scenarios and these people would sing a different tune. If Clinton were Republican and the Democrats were going after him, well, you get my point. Republican sinners are not as bad as Democratic sinners. God is always on the side of Republicans, the more conservative, the better.

The hypocrisy in Craig's case stems from his series of votes against gay rights and his support of a 2006 amendment to the Idaho Constitution that bars civil unions and gay marriages. Look, I don't care if the guy is anti this or anti that, but stand by your principles. Certainly, we elect our officials based on the premise of honesty and integrity. We want them to stand tall and fight for our rights and to do what we feel would be best for us in our communities and throughout the nation. We expect them to be intelligent and have more common sense than the average sexual deviant this man has turned out to be.

What would prompt him to walk into a very public mens' room and signal the guy next to him that he was "in the mood?" I've been known to be a betting man and odds are, the guy sitting there is doing a natural body function at the time. Wow, that's a real turn on, isn't it? May I wipe when you're done? How sick. Maybe, I don't know enough about the gay lifestyle, but if that's how they hit on each other, I don't want to know any more about it. As a straight male, I've never had the desire to hit on a woman while she's engaged in an extremely personal and private moment like pinching a loaf. Something tells me she's not going to be in the mood at the time, either. In the senator's instance, this was a total stranger, sight unseen. I guess it didn't matter who he was or what he was doing, he liked his shoes.

Rumors have been flying all around on Sen. Craig for years. This is not new and he has been written about in the past. Up until his guilty plea for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the bathroom arrest, everything previous was speculation - their word against his - and he and his staff shrugged it off and found these rumors to be laughable. Now, he should move from the closet, not the men's room, to out in the open and admit he's gay or bisexual and get on with his life. What makes him think we would buy his lame 'lack of legal counsel and not enough time to prepare a defense and that's why he pleaded guilty' excuse? He had two months to try and there was too much evidence against him. Waving his senate credentials in the face of the arresting officer who asked for his ID, for example, implied that this was not the first time he's used his power to get out of trouble.

Senator Craig, it's time to resign. Do all you can to shield your family from the plunge you are about to take. You already sh*t and it's time to get off the pot before you flush more Republican politicians down the toilet with you. They're already in enough trouble and voters want to wash their hands of the likes of you.

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