Posted on 08/28/2007 10:25:27 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
Senator Larry Craig has become our nation’s latest congressional joke. The headlines about “Craig’s List”, “His own Private Idaho”, “Brokeback Bathroom” and terror in the toilets are worth a laugh. Yet, even as funny as these headlines are at first glance, something else here doesn’t make me want to laugh.
The upshot of all this bathroom humor will ultimately be that Senator Craig was just another one of those crazy family values types that talks a good game in public and then gets freaky in the c**p stall. Postmodern “moralists” like Larry Flynt will extrapolate from there. The talking point takeaway will read that people who “preach old fashioned morality” are just hypocrites and should go put a sock in it. Because Larry Craig’s disgusting behavior gives the Penthouse Posse ammunition to impugn the decency of everyone attempting to improve the quality of America’s increasingly jaded and coarsening culture, he has become a traitor to the cause of basic decency and needs to resign or be primaried.
Senator Craig received vocal support from pro-life and pro-family groups. These people, such as The Idaho Values Alliance, have praised legislative votes taken by Larry Craig. Because Craig couldn’t rise above the absolute lowest common denominator of respectable behavior, these people now come in for grossly unjustified ridicule.
Ridicule of Larry Craig will now become a proxy for ridicule of anyone attempting to use moral suasion to improve the level of American society. Anyone seeking to stem the barbarism of moral relativity will be viewed as just another biblethumper/hypocrite. Sticking up for common decency now gets you associated with the perverted Larry Craig.
Sometimes moralists annoy me as well. This usually happens any time they accuse Little Old Me of being immoral. I understand why these types get under so many people’s skins. That doesn’t stop the quest for decent public behavior from being worthy.
Morality enforced by shame or persuasion is vastly superior to the alternative. Once all the “big-mouths” and “know-it-alls” that spout morality are demonized, once we derisively dismiss the “family values crowd” as just a bunch of hypocrites lusting for “Craig’s Crusty Crank”, we’re left with one alternative to modify the behavior of individuals in our society. That alternative is violence.
This is something to keep in mind as we snicker at the deplorable ethical example set by Senator Craig. It boils down to one fundamental question. Does Senator Craig’s status as a deeply flawed messenger imply that asking for better societal morals is flawed?
If we keep answering affirmatively to that, I want the next plane out of here. Morality does get reestablished in the end and it’s usually by the likes of Savonarola or Oliver Cromwell. I’ll take my disappointment with the hypocritical “Terror of The Toilets” over that dystopia any day.
and McGreevy is lauded for his exploits on I-95?.............
What a creep.
H
Well that's different. I just havent figured out how.
He’s dhimmicrat, of course............
Idaho, no Craig da ho.
What the left wants to do with situations such as this is state that
family/traditional values
are invalid due to incidents like this.
Nope, the message is still valid, good, and the best way to live your life, even if some of the messengers are hypocrites.
It doesn’t make the message any less valid.
I think the GOP could make a positive out of this if they openly demanded his resignation, with a message that “we’re not going to tolerate this in the Republican Party”.
Well done, sir.
Craig can be freaky if he wanted to. He just needed to wait until after he left the Senate.
This is high-level creepy. A U.S. Senator tap dancing and making hand gestures in a public restroom. That said, I disagree with everyone who is calling for him to resign. The shameless Dems never resign when they get caught doing creepy, illegal or unethical things, so why should members of the GOP (Gay old perverts) party have to resign when caught with their, ahem, pants down? At least he wasn't running a homosexual prostitution ring out of his townhouse, or taking millions of dollars in illegal donations from agents for a foreign government. I feel very very sorry for his family.
I agree, it’s absolutely disgusting, and remember he wasn’t trapped by Hillary or by some campaign tracker, but by a cop just doing his job who had no clue who this jerk is. Too bad we find out about these nitwits only after we’ve voted for them....
The worst part of it shall be, that his most vociferous critics (Larry Flynt, Rahm Emanuel, et al.) are totally IMMUNE to criticism on exactly the same grounds.
Don’t think for a minute that this was not a set-up, nor was it just a casual “net” of someone unfortunate enough to wander into a “sting”. Senator Craig was targeted, and had been for some time. The trap was laid well. And the go-ahead came from way up there in the Democratican apparatus, perhaps at the level of a large donor OUTSIDE the formal campaign organization.
This was just part of the Democratican national campaign to deprive the Republicans of any representation in Congress or the White House, and so long as those cannot be controlled by Republicans over the next few years, the Federal judiciary will be preserved for the liberals of the nation.
Yes, that worked so well and turned out so well with Mark Foley. There is NO WAY to make a positive out of this.
The rumors about Craig have been around for a while. Little doubt in my mind that Mike Rogers had something on him that he planned to announce right before the 2008 election, to guarantee another win for the RATS.
Craig should resign now and let the governor appoint a GOP replacement. That should give us a decent chance of holding the seat in the replacement election next year.
I suspect Rogers is disappointed in this turn of events. Craig’s stupidity/shameful conduct ruined his plans.
The Foley situation was radioactive because it was obvious that the leadership had known about it for a long time and because it involved minors.
There is opportunity here for the GOP to demonstrate that it won’t tolerate this stuff, to demand Craig’s immediate resignation. It won’t make it a positive, but it will show that the party acts appropriately when stuff like this happens. More than you can say for the Democrats when Gerry Studds turned his back on Congress as his censure was being read.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.