Posted on 09/01/2007 6:50:15 AM PDT by freespirited
Larry Craig's Republican Senate colleagues and their staffers were not surprised by the revelation, shocking to nearly all of Washington, of the Idaho senator's arrest and admission of guilt on disorderly conduct charges in an airport men's room.
According to Republican sources, there have been reports for many years of errant homosexual behavior by Craig, a social conservative opposed to gay rights. That reputation may have been behind his failure to win traction in bidding to become Senate Republican whip in 2002.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Will we hear the “McGreevey Resignation” today?
Ecch.
>>Craig, a social conservative opposed to gay rights.<<
I wonder what this means - I’ve seen it in several stories . I wonder if it means he opposes equal rights or that he opposes special rights.
No you won’t. Perversion and amorality is considered normal and acceptable for democrats. Only Republicans are expected to live up to moral standards. It’s time we trumpet this positive distinction.
I guess it means he opposes gay marriage and that Novak doesn’t have enough time/space/interest to detail his positions on all the other legislation.
Craig may have practiced some queer behavior, but to his credit, he did not vote with the queers.
When listening to Craig on the tape he is the perfect combination of arrogance and ignorance.
A trojan horse is very frightening to a wife, children, relatives and their children, friends and their children, constituents and their children.
Anti-life lies are contradictory to our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Why the hell didn’t he run as a democrat, he and Barney Frank would be an icon by now?
I'd expect such misreporting from the MSM, but not from conservative columnist Robert Novak. Was Craig really opposed to "gay rights," or did he merely oppose special privileges for homosexuals?
In any event, Craig should resign for sheer stupidity. IIRC, he did not get a lawyer throughout the process, even when pleading guilty. His recorded statement to the policeman did him in; he should have taken the 5th and declined to answer questions.
If he did not want publicity and did not want to fight the charges, he should have entered a no contest plea--that way the MSM could not say that he plead guilty.
Perhaps his confused mind can find clarity, purpose, strength from wife, children, relatives, friends. There needn’t be contradictions in your words and deeds. As we recognize our own irrational behavoir, we limit the damage to ourselves and to others that love us and look up to us.
I do thank Senator Craig for his contribution to this great nation.
I had to look up "splenetic", but even after doing so I'm not sure it conveys the right meaning here.
My husband worked for a Congressman back in the mid-1980s whose office was right across the hall from then-Rep. Craig’s. Even then the rumors were flying about him. He has not been surprised at all by Craig’s arrest this summer, except that it took this long for it to happen.
I want the job of Inspector General for the Republican Party. Public scandals such as this can be prevented by background investigations followed by quiet resignations. Letting something like this go on for 20 years without action is unconscionable.
“errant homosexual behavior”
Sounds like a redundancy to me (since I’m one of those intolerant Bible-thumpers and all).
Craig has been a target of the homosexual movement for sometime. What I have to ask is where are the men he has propositioned? They would most certainly if active open homosexuals have an interest in adding fuel to the fire on which Craig has thrown himself and if they were his straight targets they would surely wish him exposed. I still have not been able to find a shred of evidence outside the phony sounding description of the event provided by cop involved in this.
Craig by pleading guilty guaranteed his being pushed out of office and indeed if he was attempting to pick up men in a restroom or on the street or anywhere for that matter he should be. What I can not understand is that he has not offered a better defense of himself. If I were accused of such a thing I would be quick to trot the reporters into the airport restroom and show them if the stalls were cramped and reenact the whole thing. Some stalls are indeed very small. If the Senator were in one of those he very well may be able to accidentally bump the foot of another in an adjacent stall.
I am not too worried from a political standpoint whether his seat could ever fall to a Democrat but I am worried that Republicans have continue to allow their members to be excoriated and drummed out for some of the lightest charges.
The only exception I can think of on the Republican side is Viter. He being a nice looking man, it seems one either must reaffirm their allegiance to God or take up the fairy banner to survive such scandals. I don’t like the ugliness of this pattern. I believe that we should cleanse our ranks but I dislike the precedent that makes it so easy that one could with little money destroy the career and set off a chain reaction before an election to effectively manipulate the political landscape. They tried it with the drunk driving charge and GW, they tried it with trumped up lies about GWs national guard service, and they will continue to try it.
What I find most interesting is that in 1983 Craig who had been previously accused of having sex with congressional pages was not implicated and no pages came forward. Gary Studs however was and Studds was censured for having an affair 10 year with a male page. Interestingly enough he was not ejected from the House and was easily reelected. Usually when one is leading a double life and they are found out you quickly find a line of people willing to confirm this. Bill Clinton is a good example of this and had a seemingly endless line of women coming out of the woodwork to discuss his dalliances. Though of course this consistently was downplayed and even turned by the media successfully into a humanizing feature of a man who I believe probably raped a woman.
The Mark Foley affair which went a long way to helping produce the current political arrangement in DC should be something not forgotten. Republicans and conservatives are allowing themselves to be brow beaten and typed by the most degenerate anti-American socialist leaning major political party this country has ever seen (notice I said major). They don’t take advantage of the weaknesses of the liberal Democrats effectively and if this doesn’t change it will continue to allow ground to be lost over accusations and irrational idiocy like that involving Valerie Plame.
“In any event, Craig should resign for sheer stupidity.”
That’s it in a nutshell and the level of stupidity, by itself, demonstrates he lacks the attributes to be a Senator.
The charge was at its best a “he said, he said” situation to which clear and considered thought meant that were it to go to court Craig would most likely not have been found guilty, because the lone witness and the lone complainant was the cop - the cops word versus Craig’s word and nothing else to go on - no videos, no second “witness”, nothing else.
So, his first stupidity (or his second) was not realizing that and entering a guilty plea.
His second (or his third) stupidity was not consulting with and following the advice of a lawyer - who would have told him, and advised him that there was no need to plead guilty.
His possible first stupidity was that he was in fact guilty , and not only guilty of the slim acts of which he was accused, but of the greater motivation those acts were claimed to represent. And if that is true, it is usually a kind of behavior that someone in his position has a habit of doing.
Craig, guilty of stupidity, either way - and thus guilty of lacking the character that should help define a GOP Senator.
On the other side, there is something sad about all this in the GOP, politically, when it comes to EVERY FORM of so-called “ethical” accusation against a GOP elected official. The GOP will eat their own faster than you can spit, while, the Dims will say their member made an error, just not a grave and fatal error and then rally around them. Am I saying the Dims are totally right? No. But neither is the GOP penchant to throw everyone overboard - (i.e. Trent Lott, Tom Delay and others).
Part of the reason may be that the GOP members know so well that Dims own the media and the Dim’s media friends pretty much follow the Dim party line on these matters; while the same media treats any GOP infraction like a Pit-Bull treats red meat - hang on and never let it go.
This capitulation to the LameStreamMedia is endemic in the GOP, not just in matters like Craig (and regardless of the likely guilt and stupidity of Craig).
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