Larry Craig announces, ‘I will continue to serve Idaho’
The writing has been on the wall for a couple of weeks, but today Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) officially reversed his pledge to resign and announced he would stay in the Senate. Following today’s defeat in Minneapolis in undoing his guilty plea, Craig released a press statement:
“I am extremely disappointed with the ruling issued today. I am innocent of the charges against me. I continue to work with my legal team to explore my additional legal options.
“I will continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate, and there are several reasons for that. As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively.
“Over the course of my three terms in the Senate and five terms in the House, I have accumulated seniority and important committee assignments that are valuable to Idaho, not the least of which are my seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. A replacement would be highly unlikely to obtain these posts.”
He added, however, that he will not seek re-election next year, a race he was certain to lose if he even tried to compete. “I hope this provides the certainty Idaho needs and deserves,” he concluded.
I think it’s safe to say Republican leaders throughout the establishment will not take this news well. As Greg Sargent noted, “[A]ccording to CNN, GOP leaders abruptly canceled a press conference they had scheduled for today,” presumably so they wouldn’t have to listen to questions about Craig.
But what can they do about it?
Reiterating a point we discussed the other day, it must be terribly frustrating for the Senate Republican leadership, knowing there’s not much they can do to Craig to just go away.
The party can take away his committee assignments, but that’s already happened and it didn’t have much of an effect. Officials can withhold re-election campaign funds next year, but in Craig’s case, that probably won’t matter. Republican leaders can pretend he doesn’t exist, stop returning his calls, and no longer let him sit at the cool kids’ table in the Senate dining room, but Craig seems immune to peer pressure at this point. They could try to expel him from the chamber, but they don’t have the votes.
GOP leaders do have one tool left — an ethics committee investigation — and the party will apparently use it to make Craig absolutely miserable. From a WaPo report on Sunday:
Worried that the disgraced lawmaker intends to remain in the Senate indefinitely, they are threatening to notch up the public humiliation by seeking an open ethics hearing on the restroom scandal that enveloped Craig last month.
The Senate hearing would examine the original charges in Craig’s case, including the allegation of “interference with privacy,” for peeping into the bathroom stall occupied by an undercover police officer. One senior Republican aide imagined “witnesses, documents, all in front of the klieg lights.” The committee also could look for “a pattern of conduct” — which means combing court records in other locales to discover whether Craig had prior arrests that haven’t come to light.
What do you suppose the chances are Craig has faced related, still-unknown charges elsewhere?
Either way, just when it seemed the Craig scandal might die down, it’s major news again.
Larry Craig announces, ‘I will continue to serve Idaho’
Yes!
Staying in the news is the best revenge he can take on those fellow Republicans who threw him under the train.
Talk about flip flopping — on so many levels!
Behavior like this is where lawyer jokes come from.
All these Republicans need to get off Larry Craig’s back!
Party on, Senator Craig!
For me the best thing about this news is that Craig will be a continuing, in-your-face reminder for all of America of the stinking hypocrisy of the Republican party.
Brian @ #5: Just what do you meant by that?
Headline:
I still say that if pushed too hard Craig will start singing like a bird (in a cage) about his fellow GOPers’ peccadillos.
While I loathe him for his shitty voting record, I like the amount of trouble he’s causing his fellow bastards.
What do you suppose the chances are Craig has faced related, still-unknown charges elsewhere? — CB
Probably close to zero. If there had been more incidents like that, we probably would have heard about them; I expect many, many journos have been retracing all Craig’s trips, digging for dirt.
Craig: I da ho; I serve.
Why are the Republicans going to drag this out with ethics committee hearings? The purpose of the ethics committee hearings would be to shame him into resigning - if he hasn’t been shamed into resigning by this point, I find it doubtful that hearings will shame him further. Unless they have some dirt on him that they can pull out to get him impeached, I just don’t see how this does ANYTHING but keep him in the news for the next few months.
You’d think they’d be ready to just take away as much responsibility as they can from him, wait out his term, and start finding people in Idaho to run in the empty seat who are as “squeaky clean” of sex scandals as they can possibly find. Dragging this out like this strikes me as shooting themselves in the foot.
Time for Dems in Idaho to dig up all the Larry Craig pics and post them around town, showing Larry and his Republican buddies grinning and shaking hands.
Misery loves company!
ROFLMAO:
7.On October 4th, 2007 at 4:38 pm, OkieFromMuskogee said…
Brian @ #5: Just what do you meant by that?
Well I guess I meant that these guys (Rs) just can’t stop piling on the poor fellow.
Basically Craig is screwed. His career and legacy are down the drain.
So now Craig needs to stay is to clear his good name (through the Ethics Committee). He can’t do it if he resigns.
I say give the guy a break.
***“Over the course of my three terms in the Senate and five terms in the House, I have accumulated seniority and important committee assignments that are valuable to Idaho, not the least of which are my seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee. A replacement would be highly unlikely to obtain these posts.”***
A replacement would be even “more unlikely” to lose these posts—which Craig has already done. The way he said this leads me to believe that Craig will show up at those committee chambers, as if nothing was amiss. I’d like to be there with a camera when the Capitol Police drag him, kicking and screaming, from a committee room. He’ll probably play the “police brutality” card….
Thanks Arlen! Maybe you can find something in Scottish law to help Larry with his (next) appeal.
So we will pay this lying scum-bag’s ridiculously high retirement package for the rest of his life, and be forced to let the criminal go on his own terms. What an embarrassment. Only in America!
… the poor bastard would have resigned. There is no honor among these
theives.
I was surfing through Senator Craig’s official Web site earlier today, and I found a year-old editorial he wrote titled “Sunny Days Ahead.” It included the following sentences:
“Tranparency … has an uncanny ability to keep people honest. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”"
I think Craig is absolutely right about this, so I propose that the government remove all stall dividers and stall doors in all public men’s rooms in Idaho and Washington, D.C. And in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, too. This work should be completed before next year’s GOP convention.
Larry ‘Timex” Craig: Takes a licking, keeps on politicking.
Seems like the Dems should push for “equal treatment” hearings for Vitter.
Stubborn old fag. Just take it up the culo, Larry, like you were gonna give.
I’m not sure Craig’s Idaho constituents want him to continuing “serving Idaho”. My son lives in Boise and Craig has become a joke. Maybe that’s just among the liberals, though (yes there are a few in Idaho, esp in Boise). But I can’t imagine the conservatives (the ones not in denial over this) can be pleased to have this guy as their US Senator.
Don’t forget to check out the Senator Craig ‘wide stance’ of the elephant on the new GOP logo for the conventions in Minneapolis
Are you sure he lost his committee assignments? I thought he just lost his committee seniority. I thought it would take a new organizing resolution to get him off the committees, and with the Repubs less popular than the the Dems, I doubt they want to do that.
And his front, too!