Larry Craig: Just Foolin’ Bout That Resignation!

by John Hawkins | September 5, 2007 6:21 am

Larry Craig[1] is apparently thinking twice about turning in his resignation at the end of this month.

Oh joy!

Sen. Larry Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign after his arrest in a Minnesota airport sex sting and may still fight for his Senate seat, his spokesman said Tuesday evening.

“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told The Associated Press.

“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight–and stay in the Senate,” Smith said.

Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.

…A telephone call Craig received last week from Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., urging him to consider fighting for his seat is affecting Craig’s decision to reconsider his resignation, Smith said. (Hawkins’ Note: That’s one more thing conservatives have to thank Arlen Specter for)

…”The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” said Specter, a former prosecutor. If Craig had not pleaded guilty in August to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” Specter said.

…Billy Martin, one of Craig’s lawyers, said the senator’s arrest in an undercover police operation in men’s room of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport “raises very serious constitutional questions.”

…McConnell, R-Ky., disputed there was a double standard in how GOP leaders reacted to Craig’s case and to the admission in July by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that his telephone number showed up in 1999, 2000 and 2001 phone bills of an escort service that federal authorities say was a prostitution ring.

In Vitter’s case, “there have been no charges made,” McConnell said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing occurred before Vitter was a senator.

Craig, by contrast, pleaded guilty to a crime, McConnell said. “The legal case was, in effect, over. At that point, the question was for the Republican leadership, what would be our reaction to it,” he said.

All three of Craig’s adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father’s assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest.”

Oh, what else are they going to do? Publicly call their father a liar and run a dagger through the barely beating heart of his political career?

Okay, let’s see if we’ve got this right…If you believe Craig’s version of events, he accidentally managed to convince a cop that he was trying to pick him up in a restroom.

Then, instead of fighting the charges all the way and calling them an innocent misunderstanding, he pleaded guilty. Isn’t that what you’d do if you were falsely accused of trying to pick up a guy for gay sex in an airport bathroom?

Next, after this whole thing came out, predictably, Larry Craig’s approval ratings in Idaho plunged, Republicans turned on him, and there were calls for his resignation. So, Craig quite naturally resigned.

Now, he’s changed his mind — but, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? The moment he pled guilty, his political career was over and even if he manages to “lawyer” his way out of the guilty charges, the public isn’t going to buy it at this point. That means that there’s no way he’s going to win a Republican primary in a conservative state like Idaho.

Whether Craig likes it or not, it’s game over for him and he might as well go quietly with as much dignity as can be mustered under these sorry circumstances.

Endnotes:
  1. Larry Craig: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RF0EGO0&show_article=1

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