Republicans on Larry Craig

The Republican reaction to the Larry Craig fiasco has been interesting, and somewhat telling. For the most part they are bringing out all the political argumentative fallacies to evade the issues at hand. First up, there is Linda Chavez' article where she brings out the old saw that a democrat in the same situation wouldn't have been treated the same way by the media. The problem is, as with most articles like this, the complete lack of any evidence to support her position. Her article is chock full of "I can't imagine" and "I suspect", which means all she is doing is supporting her speculation with more speculation. Too typical, and unpersuasive.

Michael Reagan doesn't pussyfoot around, going right for the Clinton gambit in his first paragraph, before launching into a muddled analysis questioning why people think Craig is a hypocrite. One would think it'd be obvious.

Then we get Kevin McCullough’s ignorant bizarre theories on homosexuality, and how somehow Craig is right, even though McCullough doesn't refer to any rightness in his article.

And of course anyone watching Hardball with Chris Matthews last night got to see Tom Delay dance madly to avoid saying anything bad about Craig, and of course, talking about the sins and peccadillos of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

The pattern is obvious: avoid the real issues, and play the "who's a bigger hypocrite game". Blame the media, blame the gay activists, blame the Democrats, and of course, as every Republican with no real logical case to make does, talk about Bill Clinton, you know, that guy that hasn't been in the White House since before 9/11. Do everything except talking about the actual issue and leveling criticisms of Craig's ridiculous behavior. So much for the party of family values and personal responsibility.

Kudos to Debra Saunders who gets it right with a hard hitting commentary, and finishing with asking Craig to resign. That's the way intellectually honest people deal with such issues, not by pretending that you are exonerated if you can only claim the other party does bad things too. Politics is not a football game, where your side wins as long as you are less bad than the other side. If our politicians are immoral hypocritical scoundrels as Larry Craig appears to be, we all lose.