Larry Craig now says he just may not resign after all:
“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told The Associated Press.
“We’re still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign Sept. 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we’re able to stay in the fight — and stay in the Senate,” Smith said.
Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.
He probably should have hired a lawyer to begin with, rather than mailing in his plea deal and expecting everything to go away.
I’m actually pretty happy that he’s deciding to fight being pushed out of the Senate over this. Oh, don’t get me wrong — the schadenfreude of all these moralizing Republicans, particularly those who, like Craig, had plenty to say about Bill Clinton, getting caught up in one sex scandal after another is like Christmas in August. But hell, why should Craig be forced out for a sex scandal that hadn’t even yet involved any sex when David Vitter, whose name appeared on the DC Madam’s phone list, is encouraged to stay?
Well, except for the fact that Vitter’s replacement would be appointed by a Democratic governor, and he went to a female prostitute, we have an answer. Of sorts:
[Mitch] McConnell, R-Ky., disputed there was a double standard in how GOP leaders reacted to Craig’s case and to the admission in July by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that his telephone number showed up in 1999, 2000 and 2001 phone bills of an escort service that federal authorities say was a prostitution ring.
In Vitter’s case, “there have been no charges made,” McConnell said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing occurred before Vitter was a senator.
Craig, by contrast, pleaded guilty to a crime, McConnell said. “The legal case was, in effect, over. At that point, the question was for the Republican leadership, what would be our reaction to it,” he said.
Ah, yes. Because it’s the filing of charges that makes all the difference!
Okay, maybe not. Delay actually didn’t step down until it was obvious that he wasn’t going to win re-election. It wasn’t the corruption charges.
I don’t really know what the Senate rules are regarding service after being convicted of a crime, but I would imagine they’re loose enough that low-level misdemeanors such as disorderly conduct — which is what Craig pleaded to, and what five members of Congress were arrested for outside the Sudanese embassy — are gimmes. Vitter, if the story is to be believed, participated in a crime of a more serious sort, with all sorts of potential for coercion and economic disparity. Mark Foley preyed on Congressional pages, who are not only underage, but entrusted to the care of the Congress.
The more I’m reading about the Craig case, the more I’m convinced that the cop jumped the gun — while the signaling was well-known in certain circles, how can you possibly argue that the intent to have sex then and there in the stall was crystal clear? My understanding of the foot-tapping and hand-waving code is that it’s incredibly elaborate for a couple of reasons — one, because it resembles certain things one might innocently do in a stall (tap one’s toes, wave a hand underneath a stall to get paper, checking for occupancy), it doesn’t necessarily draw attention to itself. And two, if the overture is made and either no signals or the wrong signals come through, then it’s clear that the other guy isn’t into it, and you move on. This will save you a beating. The whole point, then, is to prevent unwilling straight guys from even realizing they’re being cruised:
That said, what results! In minute, choreographic detail, Mr. Humphreys (who died in 1988) illustrated that various signals — the foot tapping, the hand waving and the body positioning — are all parts of a delicate ritual of call and answer, an elaborate series of codes that require the proper response for the initiator to continue. Put simply, a straight man would be left alone after that first tap or cough or look went unanswered.
Why? The initiator does not want to be beaten up or arrested or chased by teenagers, so he engages in safeguards to ensure that any physical advance will be reciprocated. As Mr. Humphreys put it, “because of cautions built into the strategies of these encounters, no man need fear being molested in such facilities.”
Mr. Humphreys’s aim was not just academic: he was trying to illustrate to the public and the police that straight men would not be harassed in these bathrooms. His findings would seem to suggest the implausibility not only of Senator Craig’s denial — that it was all a misunderstanding — but also of the policeman’s assertion that he was a passive participant. If the code was being followed, it is likely that both men would have to have been acting consciously for the signals to continue.
But a lot of guys seem to think that the toe-tapping is lewd in and of itself, and an actionable sexual assault and far worse than any kind of harassment a woman has to put up with on the street and deal with despite the absence of undercover cops waiting to bust catcallers and frotteurs. Certainly a few self-described liberal guys on the threads here, here and here thought so (and many more disbelieved the stories the women on the threads were telling about being harassed, demanding proof).
I would imagine this kind of butt-clenching terror that a gay guy might hit on you is one of the forces driving the GOP parade of outrage over this.
Mind you, what would be really refreshing would be if Craig started taking a look at the kind of discrimination, legislation and morals policing that drives a lot of men, men like Larry Craig, to seek anonymous sex in public restrooms, instead of living out and proud in their communities and loving whom they wish.
But I won’t hold my breath.
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