Editor,
It is difficult not to laugh at the plight of Republican family-values and anti-gay folks such as Sens. David Vitter and Larry Craig when they are exposed for the hypocrites that they are. But the reaction of the Republican presidential candidates and senators is disgusting.
Craig may have attempted to initiate a homosexual relationship with a police officer in the Minneapolis airport by playing footsies, but that is hardly the stuff of a national crisis. Mostly, it appears to be a waste of police time and prosecutorial effort. Who really cares if Craig's criminal actions contradict his policy positions and commentary on President Clinton's dilemma during the late 1990s?
However, Mitt Romney could hardly wait to get in front of the cameras to denounce Craig, his campaign co-chairman. And the Republican senators suddenly discovered the existence of the Senate Ethics Committee. Apparently, this committee doesn't exist when it concerns Vitter's run-ins with a Washington, D.C., escort service or President Bush's genocide of innocent Iraqis since 2003.
Make no mistake: When Craig announced Saturday that he plans to resign, it was all about Republicans nervously eyeing the 2008 elections. After limping through a scandal-plagued 2006 election season that included Rep. Mark Foley, Vitter and the Rev. Ted Haggard, Craig was given no choice but to resign. Of course, it certainly helped that Craig is from Idaho, a traditional GOP stronghold with a Republican governor. It was easy for Republicans to demand his resignation, knowing another Republican would be appointed to the seat.
Scandal, along with the war in Iraq, helped Democrats regain control of both the Senate and the House in 2006. With the presidency now on the line, too, Republicans turned on their colleague faster than you could say, "Here we go again," with several key senators calling for his resignation. The intensity with which Craig's colleagues targeted him was stunning and spoke volumes about their worries over 2008.
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Meanwhile, these same people were either silent about or supportive of Alberto Gonzales, who recently resigned as attorney general and former counsel to Bush. Gonzales did not commit sexual peccadilloes, but he raped the Constitution and disgraced the United States with his successful advocacy of torture, illegal detention and extraordinary rendition.
As attorney general, he turned the justice department into the enforcement arm of the Republican Party, whose main mission was to elect Republicans and to make the U.S. an eerie replica of George Orwell's 1984. It will take a long time to undo the damage done by Gonzales - damage which is on a far greater scale than anything done by Craig in the bathroom.
Daniel S. Martinez
UNM student
