At last we begin to get Republian defenders for Larry Craig

OK. I previously commented on the political aspects of the Larry Craig Affair, and I really thought it was over. I forgot to factor in the "It's all the Democrats' fault!" crowd. Fortunately, Rick Perlstein found these choice comments by Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan.

Ann defends Sen. Craig by stating that liberals are practicing gay-bashing (but calling it hypocrisy) and besides, Sen. Craig didn't really do anything. He was set up.

Pat has a less coherent argument. Sen. Craig was set up, and it is all a great smear job by the Idaho Statesman, a newspaper running a witch-hunt and looking for anything in Sen. Craig's entire life that would discredit and smear him. The problem is less about Craig's character than it is about the character of those investigating him. Again, it is all the liberals fault. But then Pat goes on into the land of confusion where only someone who rode the Nixon rocket into the ground during Watergate and still believes it was a Democratic coup-de-etate could go: "

Republicans immediately denounced him, stripped him of all his seniority rights, and ordered an ethics committee investigation and a study of whether more immediate action should be taken...

[Here Pat leaves consistency and focus to the jackals. Unlike the way Pat started, blaming the liberals for castigating Craig, now they have another crime they are guilty of. Silence when Craig is attacked by his fellow Republicans.]

The silence of most Democrats is understandable. If you belong to a party that declares homosexuality a moral lifestyle, that perhaps should be elevated to the level of matrimony, then what would Craig be guilty of, other than being horribly indiscreet?

So you see? It was - the Democrats Oops his fellow Republicans - who stripped Craig of his seniority and filed ethics charges against him (Safe to do, unlike David Vitter, Larry Craig will be replaced by another Republican.)

But it is still the Democrats fault for not coming to Republican Sen. Craig's defense and defending him from his fellow Republicans when they have attacked him.

Then Pat's final paragraph channels Richard Nixon. Pat quotes him as saying "Count your friends when you're down, Nixon always advised." I guess when writing about Republican nastiness and corruption you can never to wrong quoting Richard Nixon.

As for me, I admit to not knowing what the fuss is all about. Sen. Craig's situation is not a particularly pleasant one, but it is made a great deal worse by the gay-bashing which Republicans have been practicing to attract social conservative voters, and by their perception that the Mark Foley scandal had in their defeat in keeping control of the House of Representatives in 2006.

Because of those perceptions, a homosexual Republican politician always runs this kind of risk. They have to stay in the closet (like Lindsay Graham appears to) and don't learn what forms of behavior are socially acceptable when trying to find a sex partner. Then when they do go over the edge, they are treated much more harshly than heterosexuals like David Vitter are. Vitter may be promiscuous, but since he is heterosexually promiscuous, so his inappropriate use of prostitutes can be excused with a wink-and-a-nod.

I feel sorry for Craig's family, but any homosexual Republican politician is automatically playing with fire. It is sad on a human level that Sen. Craig got burned. But I also don't like Republican behavior and the lack of empathy they demonstrate for anyone they don't know, so I don't feel too very sorry for him.