And the Democratic Response to Larry Craig Is....

by: Matt Stoller

Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 11:18

What is significant is that Senator Larry Craig is an obvious psychopath, willing to lie about being gay while voting to deny rights to others.  It's also significant that Mitt Romney scrubbed Larry Craig out of existence on his web site as if he was never Romney's Senate liaison. 

Craig and Romney are part of a larger story of the Republican Party - that they are two faced phonies who have one set of rules for themselves and another set for everyone else.  They send the country to war but their kids don't fight.  They venerate the market while living on defense contracts and wingnut welfare.  To Republicans, everything is projection, and the only sin is getting caught in public. 

This is a great time to make that case, to reinforce the narrative that Republicans are big phonies.  Instinctively, that's not what Democrats tend to do.  Democrats have been mostly silent, with a few exceptions.

For the most part, Democrats studiously avoided involvement with an unfolding Republican scandal.

"We at least ought to hear his side of the story.," said Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said his party stood to gain. "All of these people who (are) holier than thou are now under investigations. ... I think the Republican Party will find itself in a great peril next year," he said.

The public has figured out that Republicans are macho phonies, and that the most homophobic figures in the country are often very gay.  See Haggard, Ted.  What's missing is drawing the bright line between Republican character flaws, which is about hating yourself and turning that hatred onto innocent people through sadistic policies, and Republican governance.  It's a case we should start making in earnest, and the language is there for the taking.