Via the Idaho Statesman: Craig may not quit after all if he’s cleared of charges, spokesman says
U.S. Sen. Larry Craig says he might reconsider his decision to resign if he clears his name in his arrest for disorderly conduct in a restroom sex scandal.
That’s why Craig chose his words carefully during his resignation speech Saturday in Boise, according to a voice mail message he mistakenly left on a stranger’s phone. In the message obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Craig tells a man named “Billy” that his choice of language is deliberate because it leaves the door open for him to stay in office.
Craig made the call just minutes before his speech.
“We have reshaped my statement a little bit to say it is my intent to resign on Sept. 30,” Craig said.
It would seem that Craig lives in an odd world where one takes responsibility for an action (like pleading guilty for an offense or resigning) and then one turns around and rescinds the action. This is rather odd. Had he wanted to fight for his job (or his innocence) there were appropriate junctures at which to do so. To play this game is plain strange, not to mention not politically viable.
If Craig indeed has been planning to un-resign, it simply demonstrates that the man truly does live in a self-delusional world (which was already pretty clear to begin with).
Further, Craig’s intelligence continues to be called into question–leaving voicemails like that on the wrong person’s phone isn’t an especially bright move.
BTW, the contents of the voicemail were confirmed by Craig’s spokesman, Dan Whiting:
The voice is indeed Craig’s, spokesman Dan Whiting said.
[...]
Whiting confirmed in an e-mail that his boss “intends to resign on Sept. 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”
Via the AP, another of Craig’s spokesmen (what’s with all the spokesmen?–Ed.) said:
“It’s not such a foregone conclusion anymore that the only thing he could do was resign,” Sidney Smith, Craig’s spokesman in Idaho’s capital, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
[...]
“It was a little more cut and dried a few days ago,” Smith said. “There weren’t many options. He was basically going to have to step aside. Now, there’s a little more to it.”
While it appears no different to me, it seems that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) sees it otherwise:
“The more people take a look at the situation, there may well be second thoughts,” said Specter, a former prosecutor. If Craig had not pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and instead demanded a trial, “I believe he would have been exonerated,” Specter said.
Not only does such a position seem to defy the public record, it is politically rather stupid at this juncture, at least from the perspective of the GOP. Why anyone would want to drag this out is beyond me.
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September 5th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
The criminal case against Larry Craig was indeed weak from a factual perspective. A wide stance and touching the bottom of the stall partition isn’t a crime, despite it being evidence that he is sick. Had Craig believed enough in his own innocence, he could have hired counsel to defeat the charge.
But he plead guilty.
And it’s a hard sell for a U.S. Senator to claim that he somehow misunderstood the gravity of that choice.
His recent backpedalling speaks for itself. The “strategy” is the misbegotten child of poor counsel from fellow Senator Arlen Specter (PA) who is a space cadet in his own right, and Craig’s own strange belief that Americans will forget his plea and his resignation announcement.
Craig forgets that he resigned not because of an erroneous guilty plea, but because the entire constellation of events leads to a believable impression that the married Senator was trying to solicit sex from people he didn’t know from a stall in an airport men’s room.
Overturning a guilty plea doesn’t fix the problem.