Craig's quick condemnation shows GOP hypocrisy

Craig's quick condemnation shows hypocrisy in Senate GOP, critics say 08/30/2007 @ 1:11 pmFiled by Nick Juliano CREW wants Vitter, Stevens to be demoted as well Sen. Larry Craig had not even publicly addressed charges he tried to solicit sex in a public men's room before members of his own party began to vehemently criticize his alleged conduct. Less that 24 hours after he expressed regret for pleading guilty to disorderly conduct after an undercover cop said the Idaho Republican propositioned him, Craig was ousted from his committee posts in a decision Senate leaders said was "in the best interest" of the chamber. Meanwhile, it has been 52 days since Craig's GOP colleague David Vitter acknowledged the "serious sin" of soliciting a call girl, yet the Louisiana senator has not budged from his committee posts. Where Craig faced condemnation, Vitter received words of encouragement from colleagues -- or at the very least, silence. Sen. Ted Stevens's prominent position in the Senate also seems safe, despite the Alaska Republican's own taint of scandal. The FBI raided Stevens's home last month in connection with a political corruption scandal in his home state. Substantial renovations of the home were carried out by contractors hired by oil-services company Veco Corp., whose executives have been accused of bribing state lawmakers. "A disorderly conduct plea requires a member to give up his committee assignment, but a full-fledged bribery investigation does not," observed Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Apparently, in the view of the Republican conference there is almost nothing more serious than a member attempting to engage in gay sex." The key distinction between Craig's case and those of Stevens and Vitter, in the eyes of Republican leaders, is that Craig has been charged with and pleaded guilty to a crime, where the others have not, a leadership source tells RAW STORY. CREW does not see things that way, and the private watchdog group has asked that Stevens and Vitter be stripped of their committee assignments. Republican leaders already have asked the ethics committee to investigate Craig's conduct, echoing an earlier call from CREW, but it is unlikely that Vitter or Craig will be demoted, the source said. In Vitter's case, the rendezvous with prostitutes he admitted to occurred before his 2004 election to the Senate and hence would fall outside the purview of the ethics committee. As for Stevens, the most senior Republican in the chamber, he has insisted he is not a "target" of the FBI's investigation and has not been accused of any crime. Salon's Glenn Greenwald outlines some other possible explanations for the different treatment of Craig's and Vitter's sexual escapades. For one thing, Craig's vacant seat would be filled by a Republican governor, whereas Vitter would be replaced by a Democrat, further tipping the balance of power in the Senate. But Greenwald goes on to observe that attacks on gay Republicans have "no political cost" because they condemn none of the "values voters" upon which the party relies. Conversely, heterosexual perversion, divorce, and out-of-wedlock childbirth are substantial problems, especially in the very regions of the country where Republican support is highest, so the party is unwilling to lead moral crusades against those sins, Greenwald argues. "The only kind of 'morality' that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality," he says. "That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations -- from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage -- are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation."