The Larry Craig Saga: The GOP Thing That Won't Go Away

Incredibly, the 'Spud Stud' Now Makes Noises Like He's Going to Stay in the Senate

"He sounded almost as convincing as, 'I did not have sex with that woman.'"
-- Gary Bauer, referring to Larry Craig's speech on August 28th where he denied that he was gay, as quoted by The New York Times, August 29, 2007.

September 4, 2007 -- Potato State Republican Sen. Larry Craig, after supposedly resigning on Sept. 1st, is now giving the public whiplash by implying he might stay in the Senate, based on some mumblings by Sen. Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter (R-Ding Dong), to the effect that he didn't think Craig should quit his office on a misdemeanor charge.

Do you ever get the feeling that the GOP is as suicidal as a Baghdad car bomber? Let's examine the various problems for the Republicans if Craig decides to 'tough it out' and retain his Senate seat until 2009:

-- If you read the transcript of the interview between arresting officer Sgt. Dave Karsnia and Craig, where 'Wide Stance' tries to pawn off his various bathroom stall motions -- staring into Karsnia's stall in the opening between the door and the frame; playing footsy with the cop; reaching into Karsnia's stall for a piece of toilet paper -- as innocent and misinterpreted by the cop, you'll hear Karsnia's reaction, which boils down to "You're sitting here lying to a police officer." Sure, the right-wing noise machine may try to paint Karsnia as some kind of Dem Gore-lover, but the fact is, he has a picture on his desk of him proudly shaking hands with Dick Cheney when the police sergeant received an officer of the year commendation in 2003. Right-wingers perpetually flap jaw about their love of law enforcement. In this 'he said-he said' encounter, they're either going to have to believe the cop or Craig. If they back Craig, they're saying this officer is either lying or incompetent, and they may hear some grumblings from disgruntled law enforcement groups. Do they really want to go there? Besides, if it was all so innocent, why did he plead guilty, even to a reduced charge?

-- It's only a matter of time before one of Craig's other public restroom romances comes to light. Just as Ted Haggard was outed by male prostitute Mike Jones, the other shoe to drop in this case would be one of the three anonymous men who have admitted to having sex with Craig in men's rooms going public. One is said to be a prominent Republican. A man with a name and a face saying he had sex with Lar in public restrooms would finally sink Craig and indelibly damage what little credibility the GOP has left. Paging Gary Hart!

-- The best gift the GOP could give the Dems would be to let Craig hang in there until 2009, whether he runs for reelection in 2008 or not. Larry's seriously damaged goods and his presence in the Senate will be a reminder of the hypocrisy and sleaziness of the Republican Party. The GOP even risks losing a reliable Red State seat due to Craig's obstinate ego.

Side Note: I have yet to hear the Big Media carp about the GOP being in disarray and the Republican leadership toothless, as they inevitably do when a Democrat does something outrageous and refuses to resign for the good of the party, such as Rep. William Jefferson and his illicit $90,000 freezer bank.

I wonder, after this close-up encounter with GOP hypocrisy and deceit, Sgt. Karsnia will ditch the picture of him and Vice President Shotgun on his desk; I wonder if he'll ever vote Republican again.

Karsnia had it dead right, when he responded to Craig's arrogant attempts at deception by disgustedly remarking, "No wonder why we're going down the tubes."

Indeed, he had met one of the plumbers laying the pipe, so to speak.
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As GOP Runs From Larry the Lout, They Now Must Face Their Own 'Stall Tactics'

"No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live."
-- Mark Twain

August 31, 2007 -- In a swirl of recent events that started with the advertised evacuation of Turd Blossom Rove from the White House Inner Circle today to spend more time annoying his family, and continued with the wiping of Alberto Gonzales from the Justice Department AG's office, has culminated in self-righteous Idaho prig Sen. Larry Craig flushing what's left of Republican credibility straight -- or not, as the case may be -- down the drain.

His absurd tale of inhuman feats of contortion in a Minneapolis airport restroom -- sticking his foot into another man's stall and desperately pursuing a piece of toilet paper with his hand in the same stall, all the while allegedly heeding the call of nature -- is worthy of the Rose Mary Woods Improbable Physical Achievement Award. Next we'll hear that his Stupid Human Bathroom Tricks were merely rehearsal for his job with a carnival freak show, perhaps the only place that will employ him after he resigns in disgrace from the Senate next week. (Don't feel too bad for Lar -- he'll still get his munificent retirement benefits from his terms in the House and Senate, courtesy of us sucke -- er, taxpayers.)

Incidentally, you remember Woods, Nixon's secretary who took the blame for some of the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap on one of Dick's Watergate tapes, even to the point of re-enacting for the media the awkward Twister position she would have had to maintain for nearly twenty minutes to erase the tape. Just looking at her was enough to induce a hernia. Nobody believed Woods' ludicrous story then; nobody believes Craig's nonsense now.

Added to all of the other putrid effluvium gushing out of the GOP sewer pipe these days, from the broken-float Porcelain God in the White House on down, the Craig cringer comes as the clincher, that golden moment; a point of no return from which, strain as they might, the hilariously hypocritical and routinely deceitful Republicans can't recover -- moving the party from the realm of the simply awful to the awfully ridiculous. As GOP campaign mentato Scott Reed was quoted on Aug. 29th, noting the Craig scandal:

"The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness. You can't make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country."

Indeed, it seems Mr. Reed has blundered into the truth, except the 'level of ridiculousness' has been passed; the Republicans are now in full-bore fright-wig Emmett Kelly mode, their constant stream of excuse and piety sounding like so many horn honks from a clown car to the average schlub and schlubette. Oh, the Big Media (BM) and the Punditocracy still treats the rogue elephant act and its ringmasters with some amount of respect, but out there in the retail seats the overflowing GOP cesspool inspires only rude punchlines or ruddy-faced anger.

If the Comedy King of Crapola and his Devoted Dissemblers can hold office for another 16 months, Pat Robertson can claim a miracle, but it won't be due to any help from the Republicans in Congress, gradually coming to realize that the retiring Rove, with his obsessive appeals to religious cranks for votes and manifest White House incompetence, has left them with a red rubber nose and little else to run on.

More than any other issue, the next election is shaping up to be about the Sleaze Factor, a distinct disadvantage to those who wear an 'R' after their names. Hill-Billery may have her drawbacks, but none of them involve playing footsy in a men's room for sex or coercing underage boys into iniquity. Such subjects give deep pause to the very Values Voters Count Karlo has been assiduously cultivating for the past ten years -- the core of his down-the-tubes strategy for maintaining a permanent GOP majority.

The cantankerous fundamentalist Christians might very well stay home in disgust next election while independent wafflers, not overjoyed with Sen. Clinton or the quivering Dems, but appalled at the staggering stench from the backed-up Republican septic tank, cast their votes against the cynical Party of Public Morality and Private Hypocrisy.

Fred Thompson, that shy political pornographer of the right, has flashed his supporters again that he will finally lose his presidential virginity in early September and officially become a member of the cast of They Were Expendable. Reagan Number Two, dive right in -- and try not to swallow the backwash as you sink into the landslide mud of the malodorous Republican scum who came before you.

"The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in ... passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life."
-- Bertrand Russell

"The Christian Right is Neither."
-- Bumper sticker cited by John McCain's Campaign in 2000.

"The phone number of Senator David Vitter (R., La.), an advocate of family
values and of Rudolph Giuliani, was found on the client list of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is accused of running a Washington, D.C., area prostitution ring." [...]
"Florida State Representative Bob Allen (R., Merritt Island) was arrested for offering to perform an unspecified sex act on an undercover police officer for $20."
-- Sam Stark, Myth: Republicans value sexual morality