Yellowdogtexan
10-12-2007, 11:27 PM
The GOP got Larry of the wide stance Craig to agree to resign initially by threathening and then filing a very broad ethics charge against him. The GOP threathen Craig with an embarrassing ethics investigation with public hearings in a game of political chicken. Now that game of chicken may backfire on the GOP http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071012/craig-ethics/Now that scandal-tinged Idaho Sen. Larry Craig has reneged on a pledge to resign this fall, his fellow Republican senators act as though they hardly know him. They want voters to forget him, too.
But they privately acknowledge that an earlier strategy to drive Craig from office has backfired, sticking them with an open-ended ethics investigation likely to keep the issue before the public for months.
Senate Republicans demanded the Ethics Committee inquiry into his sex-sting conviction last summer in hopes of forcing Craig to resign. He essentially called their bluff this month when he reversed his decision to resign Sept. 30 unless a court let him drop his guilty plea.
Now Republicans are powerless to stop a process almost certain to do more political damage to the party in general than to a retiring senator.
"I think they were a little fanciful" in urging the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics to take up the matter, said Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer for Craig. He called the strong-arm strategy "ethical waterboarding," referring to the controversial interrogation technique.
Some senators had pointedly warned Craig that any ethics committee hearings might be public, and probably televised.
While public hearings are possible, lawyers and Senate staffers familiar with the committee say closed sessions seem more likely. The last public hearings were held 17 years ago, in the "Keating Five" case. The "Keating Five" case was a congressional scandal involving the widespread failure of savings and loans institutions.
Current Ethics Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., unsuccessfully pressed for public hearings in 1995 into sexual harassment charges against Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore. But colleagues and analysts said Boxer and her fellow Democrats might proceed cautiously in the Craig matter.
Senate Democrats are wary of creating precedents involving misdemeanor charges that could ensnare their own party members someday. They also will want to avoid a public spectacle that some might interpret as gay-bashing.
"Don't look for any open hearings or for any speedy resolution of this case," said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "Republicans would like it out of the news. And Democrats, who don't mind at all having it in the news, must be careful not to press too hard and offend many of their supporters."Since Senator Craig called the GOP's bluff on a public ethics hearing, this could be fun to watch.
But they privately acknowledge that an earlier strategy to drive Craig from office has backfired, sticking them with an open-ended ethics investigation likely to keep the issue before the public for months.
Senate Republicans demanded the Ethics Committee inquiry into his sex-sting conviction last summer in hopes of forcing Craig to resign. He essentially called their bluff this month when he reversed his decision to resign Sept. 30 unless a court let him drop his guilty plea.
Now Republicans are powerless to stop a process almost certain to do more political damage to the party in general than to a retiring senator.
"I think they were a little fanciful" in urging the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics to take up the matter, said Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer for Craig. He called the strong-arm strategy "ethical waterboarding," referring to the controversial interrogation technique.
Some senators had pointedly warned Craig that any ethics committee hearings might be public, and probably televised.
While public hearings are possible, lawyers and Senate staffers familiar with the committee say closed sessions seem more likely. The last public hearings were held 17 years ago, in the "Keating Five" case. The "Keating Five" case was a congressional scandal involving the widespread failure of savings and loans institutions.
Current Ethics Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., unsuccessfully pressed for public hearings in 1995 into sexual harassment charges against Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore. But colleagues and analysts said Boxer and her fellow Democrats might proceed cautiously in the Craig matter.
Senate Democrats are wary of creating precedents involving misdemeanor charges that could ensnare their own party members someday. They also will want to avoid a public spectacle that some might interpret as gay-bashing.
"Don't look for any open hearings or for any speedy resolution of this case," said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "Republicans would like it out of the news. And Democrats, who don't mind at all having it in the news, must be careful not to press too hard and offend many of their supporters."Since Senator Craig called the GOP's bluff on a public ethics hearing, this could be fun to watch.