Craig roles the dice

August 28, 2007

He got caught, pled guilty, and saw his career start to slip away, but this afternoon, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) decided to roll the dice and deny everything.

Under fire from leaders of his own party, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig on Tuesday said the only thing he had done wrong was to plead guilty after a complaint of lewd conduct in a men’s room. He declared, “I am not gay. I never have been gay.”

“I did nothing wrong at the Minneapolis airport,” he said at a news conference with his wife, Suzanne, at his side.

I know this is going to sound silly, but as political strategies go, this isn’t a ridiculous idea. Now that he’s had time to think about it, Craig realizes that the criminal charges against him are pretty thin, and he wasn’t actually caught propositioning anyone. Sure, it looks like Craig was trying to make sexual advances on the stranger in the next stall, but as long as he can argue, with a straight face, that this is the result of a misunderstanding, there’s no irrefutable proof that he’s lying.

In other words, the only thing that would force Craig to come clean and admit that he’s gay is if he were caught having sex with a man. Short of that, he can keep denying everything — and dare everyone to prove him wrong.

He’s asking quite a bit of his supporters — who may be loyal Republicans, but they’re not crazy — but Craig actually seems to believe he can survive this mess just so long as he sticks to his story. It’s a shame, but it looks like Craig believes he has no other choice.

Whether his allies in the Senate agree to this charade is another matter entirely.

Craig’s defiant news conference came as Senate Republican leaders in Washington called for an ethics committee review into his involvement in a police sting operation this summer in the airport men’s room.

“In the meantime, the leadership is examining other aspects of the case to see if additional action is required,” Sen. Mitch McConnell and other top GOP lawmakers said in a written statement obtained by The Associated Press.

Craig’s denial probably isn’t the end of this mess.

Notice how he started his statement by saying “thank you for coming out today”? Practice what you preach, Lavatory Larry.

  • Sure, it makes sense for Sen. Craig to deny everything. This is a standard political strategy. It will probably work as long as there isn’t a future deluge of information proving the opposite of his claim that he is not gay and never has been. If he has a male lover lurking somewhere out there, Craig’s pronouncement might be just the thing that would bring him out of hiding and into public view.

    I agree that it is a roll of the dice on Craig’s part.

    out west

  • I’d be inclined to believe him, except I’m not a complete fraking moron. I can see why he thinks the GOP base will buy it, though.

  • …there’s no irrefutable proof that he’s lying.”

    Yet. But dontcha think that his past gay contacts are about to start popping up all over the place?

    In a way, I feel sorry for the likes of Craig and Ted Haggard. They are so very, very obviously gay, but they can’t admit it, perhaps even to themselves. Life isn’t easy for a gay social conservative.

    Speaking of Ted Haggard, did everyone see this item (by way of Crooks and Liars)? Haggard may not be a pastor anymore, but he is still expecting members of the flock to support him and his family. (Sorry, CB, if I’ve jumped the gun on “This week in God.”)

  • ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    CB: but as long as he can argue, with a straight face…

    Nice pun.

    And I agree he is not gay.
    He is bisexual.

    One more thing:

    Someone needs to put a spoof auction up on Ebay:
    Sen. Larry Craig’s shoes….

    One more one more thing:

    Larry… learn to flush and wash your hands.
    That’s just disgusting!

  • Even if he can deny everything, the officer in the case would have to be muzzled, and for a misdemeanor, would a judge do that?
    By rolling the dice, he has added to the pressure the local papers are under to reveal what they know and have not yet published.
    Idaho is staunchly Republican, Craig has been denying this for years, which is sad, but it only matters now because the GOP made such an extreme case about sexuality in the first place and Craig was a willing foot soldier.
    There will be a dozen people filing before the week is out to take his job and fill in as those further down the line move up. I agree he might be able to serve out his term, but he should not run for reelection.

  • I hope that he keeps denying it and runs for reelection. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a Democratic Senator from Idaho seated in 2009!

  • Given how clear and, dare I say, irrefutable the police report makes it about what he was doing, I find it very hard to believe that he can claim it was anything else. Strict social conformity for me but not for thee, eh? Let him suffer the wrath of his voters anyway. Hopefully Idaho will replace him with another guy like Jon Tester.

  • Larry would be doing a lot better if he had stolen money or taken bribes – that kind of thing his GOP colleagues would never take to the ethics committee; where are all the ethics investigations for all the other GOP miscreants?

    I’m kind of getting to the point where it’s enough already. The guy probably figured a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge would go away faster if he just pled guilty and paid the fines than if he’d hired a lawyer and the whole questionable mess came out. Of course, now it is coming out (no pun intended), and he looks guilty as hell for seeming to have hidden it.

    If I were advising him, I’d tell him to quit all the protestations that he isn’t gay – that’s just making people more convinced that he is. I’d tell him to say that he never thought there was anything to the charges, and he couldn’t see making a big deal out of the whole thing. He should also say that what he’s learned from this experience is that how he’s been treated by his colleagues and the media has given him an appreciation for just how wrong it is to demonize people on the basis of their sexual orientation. And that while he is not gay, he realizes how difficult it must be for people who are to fight a system which thinks that’s okay.

    But he can’t even bring himself to say these things, because it would mean the end to representing the people of Idaho, who probably elected him to demonize gays in as many ways as possible.

    I thik that’s what known as being hoist on your own petard.

  • Now he’s gonna deny that Sacajawea’s people the Lemhi-Shoshone have been exiled for exactly 100 hundred years in Idaho, stripped of federal recognition in 1907. Sacajawea (Americas most famous native American woman) would be disgusted if she knew what would happen after Lewis and Clark…and with Idaho’s so-called “leaders” http://www.lemhi-shoshone.com

  • He’s going with the classic Republican defense: “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?”

  • Sure Larry, you aren’t queer, just studying queers like Edwards was studying poverty. And even if true you have proved yourself to stupid to serve in the senate.

  • Of course Senator Wide Stance isn’t gay. He’s still alive, isn’t he? If he was gay, he’d have already committed suicide, which as everyone knows is a common symptom of gayness.

  • The link says this:

    =====

    “Craig, his wife Suzanne at his side, took no questions in a brief appearance in the capital city of the state he has represented in Congress for more than two decades in the House and then the Senate.

    He had “overreacted and made a poor decision” when he was apprehended by an undercover police officer in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport and later pleaded guilty.

    “While I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct in the Minneapolis Airport or anywhere else, I chose to plead guilty to a lesser charge in hopes of making it go away.” He said he kept the information from his friends, family and staff, adding, “I wasn’t eager to share this failure but I should have anyway because I am not gay.”

    =====

    To what “lesser charge” does Craig refer? What was the “greater charge”?

  • He’s not gay. He has anonymous sex with men, but it’s just a temporary rebellion thing. ‘His Own Now-Public Idaho’, if you will.

    Maybe it’s a generational thing, or maybe things are different in Idaho, but in the homophobic America where I grew up, boys learned to keep their eyes on their own business at the urinal and keep their feet and hands where they belong in the stalls. Especially in ‘those’ kind of restrooms.

    So, Senator, is that your final answer?

  • I’m writing a post right now which says the exact opposite: Now that he already pled guilty and is being denounced by conservatives, his only hope is to come clean, apologize for his deception and bad behavior, and make everyone realize that they supported a gay politician, he’s still the same man they knew and loved, and he has a record he can be proud of. Sure, it probably won’t work either, but it’s better than the alternative. If you’re going to go down, you might as well go down in style.

    Of course, now that he’s already denied it, I’m not sure even my strategy could work.

  • If you’re going to go down, you might as well go down in style.

    HAHAH…too funny…

    There’s no surviving this..

  • Were I in Craig’s place, the last thing I would have done is plead guilty to something I didn’t do. Assuming I was innocent, I would have fought the charges vigorously rather than make a public admission of guilt. Forget the hypocrisy; Craig deserves to lose his seat because of stupidity.

  • Ummmm, yeah, he did nothing wrong here or in other men’s rooms. Then precisely why did he know the universal ‘looking to play’ signals used in men’s rooms? His story m-i-g-h-t be more credible if he weren’t described as tapping his foot, moving his hand along the partition, etc. He got caught and was exposed and now wants to deny it. He needs to come out of his closet already. Oh wait, I suppose the next thing will be admitting that he has a drug or alcohol problem and will be seeking rehab.

  • All I have to say is “where there’s smoke”. This isn’t the first allegation. Guilty. And a first class hypocrite. If republicans want to be the bastions of morality – you better damn will live up to it, and you’ve done a miserable job, worse even than dems, so take a good close look in the mirror.

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