UPDATED: “About the only safe Republican Senate seats in ’08 are the ones that aren’t on the ballot”
UPDATE – The Fix: Craig Bows to the Inevitable
From the moment Roll Call reported that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) had pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in an airport men’s bathroom in June, it was a matter of when, not if, the GOP incumbent resigned his post.
ALSO:
Republican leaders including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were furious that Craig kept his guilty plea secret from the party and left the Republicans vulnerable to morality attacks heading into the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. McConnell described Craig’s conduct as “unforgivable.”
UPDATE: Here is another analysis by John Judis in The New Republic.
Washington Post: GOP Faces Dimming Prospects in ’08
A Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the resignation of Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).
Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner’s retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them — in Virginia and Colorado — are prime targets for Democrats.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
2 Responses to “UPDATED: “About the only safe Republican Senate seats in ’08 are the ones that aren’t on the ballot””
Of course, even the Washington Post does not take the Republican’s problems to their logical conclusion. When the Democrats get to 60 seats in the Senate in either 2008 or 2010, the Republican Party becomes irrelevant to national politics and the donations will end.
Why will anyone in the future donate money, time, or take an interest in a politicial party that has zero affect on national politics.
I thought Mark Shields was right – if I understood his remarks yesterday on the News Hour – to connect the reactions by GOP leaders to Larry Craig to their failure to react (and the cost thereof) to Mark Foley. As I understood Shields’ point, Foley was a problem that many in the CGOP leadership was aware of, but one they did nothing about – they supposedly let the problem fester, and when that sordid backstory emerged, they paid a very heavy price last fall. (The actual facts of the matter are irrelevant; what matters is that this is the version of events that was accepted by the voters.) When the Craig story broke, wanting to avoid making the same mistake twice, they’re reacting extremely strongly: “I’ve got the rope, you find the tree,” as Shields put it, has been the GOP standard this week.
My opinion is that this is right and proper – members of the United States Senate (and a fortiori Republican Senators – we, after all, are supposedly the moral party) ought to be held to a fairly high standard, and soliciting anonymous extramarital sex fails any imaginable threshold. But I do agree with Shields if he means to say that the reaction has been so strong and so uniform because the party doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes it was hung from over Foley.