Senate Ethics Committee Gives Craig a Slap on the Hand
Larry Craig Pulls One Over on Us
By Jill Kuraitis, 2-14-08
The Idaho Statesman’s Kevin Richert says it best:
The CBS radio network called us Wednesday night for the obligatory local reaction to the Senate Ethics Committee’s rebuke of Larry Craig.
Asked how I thought the news would play in Idaho, I kept coming back to one word: fatigue.
I think Idahoans are tired of this tawdry tale — and tired of listening to Craig play the victim’s card.
We’re sick of it, all right. And the tale is indeed tawdry, but the outcome is even more disgusting: Larry Craig won, and we lost.
At Craig’s “I intend to resign” press conference at the Boise Depot, people asked me and other writers to predict the conclusion of the Craig story. I was convinced by others that he wouldn’t resign, then astonished myself by thinking I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for reelection.
I still wouldn’t be all that surprised, though it’s unlikely. But Craig’s denials and legal wranglings are a water-treading approach that has kept him in office and assured him the highest possible pension for his years in Congress.
His stick-it-out method has also assured that Idaho’s already oddball image will be odder still, and that Idaho is represented in the United States Senate by a powerless joke.
If Craig were persistent for a noble cause, we’d say he had true grit.
But the gritty truth is that the joke is on us.
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