I hate talking about tawdry, essentially tabloid like allegations.  Clearly, the Sen. Craig bathroom story has sucked up much oxygen in the last few days.  Apparently, he will resign as of September 30 and allow Idaho Governor, Republican, Butch Otter to appoint a replacement.  This is very good under otherwise bad circumstances.  This gives the GOP a strong chance to maintain a reliably safe seat in the Senate.  Given the retirement of one of the GOP's most senior and respected members, Virginia's John Warner, we need all the silver linings we can get.

While Warner's retirement is a blow for us politically as well as a loss to the institution, at least it is reasonable and to be anticipated, Warner is 80.  The Craig situation is really just tragic.  The issue is not Sen. Craig's sexual identity but the fact that he neglected to mention his arrest for three months and now tries to wipe away a guilty plea.  If he was innocent, why did he plead.  Its not as if his legal counsel suggested he had no case since he never consulted a legal counsel, he just did it.  Whether guilty or not, and let's be honest, no one thinks he wasn't doing "something" inappropriate, his actions after the fact make him look like just another priviledged legislator trying to get away with the kind of stuff that would land an ordinary mortal into hot water.

I do think that the liberal media has engaged in a high level of schaedenfraude and that the perverse pleasure they take in ripping Sen. Craig is completely over the top and shows just how "compassionate" self described liberals really are.  However, Craig's own actions invited this response.  If one is a conservative Republican who is adhering to their principles, they know they are going to get rough treatment from the press.  To engage in highly risky behavior that obviously smacks of hypocrisy is simply more dangerous for the GOP than the Democrats because it is that very sense of hypocrisy that most people find so unpleasant.  Its not that anyone who has a historical memory or just good common sense doesn't know a Democrat is perfectly capable of being  corrupt (which has been and will be proved again), but they simply don't hold themselves up to the same standards.  Consequently, when a Democrat falls, it doesn't have that odor of hypocrisy which I think is often perceived as more wrong than the underlying offense itself.  We need to realize that fair or not, this is the way that it is.  Fair or not, when a Republican makes this kind of mistake, it is incumbent upon us to take action quickly so as to not offer additional ammunition to the Democrats who will be merciless in their exploitation of all mistakes.