I guess we will have Larry Craig to kick around some more

In a best case (at least so far as the GOP is concerned) scenario, here’s what we know about Senator Larry Craig from Idaho.

1. He cracks under pressure.  Facing arrest and scandal, he dithered for two months, not even seeking legal counsel, before admitting to a lesser charge so as to (he hoped) put it all behind him.  Bad decision-making in both the short-term and long-term.
2. He is subject to blackmail.  If he’d confess to a crime he hadn’t committed (he claims) just to avoid scandal … well … what does that say about what else he might do if threatened with scandal (even scandal that he’s not really guilty of, as he claims)?  There’s a Robert Ludlum novel just waiting to happen there …
3. He can’t make up his mind.  First he’s resigning from the Senate.  Then he’s resigning only if he can’t get a judge to reopen his case and overturn his guilty plea. Now that the judge has laughed in his face, he’s not resigning after all, but sticking it out to the end of is term in 2009.
4. He’s politically tone-deaf and not a team player.   His GOP colleagues want him gone, for the good of the party.  They’ve pushed for an ethics review of his case to pressure him.  He’s been stripped of seniority on panels.  What Larry Craig is most interested in right now is Larry Craig — even using the (dubious) argument that he doesn’t want to deprive the citizens of Idaho with the benefits accruing from his seniority positions (which he’s been stripped of).  By sticking around, he almost certainly hurts the GOP, the party that ostensibly supports his loudly voiced conservative values — but what’s important now to him is to stick around to fight the ethics investigation in the Senate. It’s all about him.  Has he been shabbily treated by his party?  Yup.  Does that make his intransigence the right thing to do?  Probably not …

Now, all this is aside from an veracity regarding the charges in the airport bathroom sex sting, or his possible hypocrisy at criticism of homosexuality if he was, indeed, soliciting sex in said bathroom.   But even leaving that alone (since that raises the sad questions about living in the closet and the unseemly GOP throwing-off-the-sleigh if you’re charged with a gay sex scandal, but not necessarily a straight one).  Even assuming the best, that Larry Craig is as pure as the driven snow and as innocent as a saint — he’s clearly demonstrated his unsuitability to serve as a Senator.