The moral perversions of the Republican Party.

Senator Larry Craig says he will serve out his term in office and not seek re-election. You will remember he was arrested for supposedly tapping his foot in a toilet stall and an undercover police officer claimed this was code that Craig wanted to have sex. Even if true, indicating a willingness to have sex is not a crime, but the police sting works on getting people so scared that they pled guilty to get it over with and pay a fine. That is what Craig did.

Craig was pressured by fellow Republicans to resign from office. Of course when Senator David Vitter was forced to admit that he was frequenting prostitutes the same Republicans yawned, went “tsk, tsk” and told him to be a good boy from now on. But Craig had tapped his foot to a man! And that is somewhere up there with betraying the atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets in Theopublican books.

The New York Times reports that Republicans are dismayed because Craig’s presence is seen as “potential harm to the party” and “could tarnish the party’s overall reputation.”

Okay, I’ll do this real slow so even Republican politicians can understand what I’m saying. What reputation! My god, people, that horse got out of the barn ages ago. And if we were to go down the list of things that have damaged the reputation of the Republican Party some toe tapping in the toilet would be rather far down the list.

Surely there are other things of far graver concern to most Americans -- like the Americans who keep dying in that stupid war in Iraq. Your vaunted party leader lied to the American people repeatedly. It is almost fair to say that everything he told the public about the war was one massive lie.

George Bush couldn’t tell the truth about the war if his life depended on it. Billions and billions of dollars flushed down the toilet because of it. Thousands of Americans killed. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of civilians killed. Iraq plunged into civil war, oil markets violently disrupted, and terrorism escalating as a result. Most sane people find those issues a bit more of a concern than whether or not an old man wanted a blow job!

And then we have Bush proving his immoral character by authorizing and sanctioning torture. The United States was officially added to the list of nations that engaged in torture routinely -- nations like Russia, China, North Korea, Nazi Germany, etc. The U.S. has put its stamp of approval on torture used anywhere in the world. It gave up the moral high ground and jumped into the gutter with the sleaze nations of history. That is far more of a concern than whether or not Senator Craig wanted to get his jollies with an undercover police officer.

We have had eight years of total incompetency. Not only was Bush the worst spender in decades he was clearly the most inept man to sit in the White House. Jimmy Carter was awful but Bush makes him look good. At least Carter had some human decency which is not an attribute I would claim for Bush.

The only thing Bush did efficiently was the very thing for which he deserves prison -- push America much farther down the road toward a police state than any previous president. He shredded Constitutional rights in a manner not seen since the overrated F.D.R. sat in the White House. Bush would be right up there with presidents who disgraced their oath to uphold the Constitution. I have to admit that I have trouble deciding who was worse: Bush, F.D.R. or Lincoln. I used to put Wilson in that camp but Bush has knocked him out of the running. I suspect Bush will win on in that race toward the bottom.

The reality is that George Bush has done more to bring shame on the United States than any one single living person in recent memory. And yet Republican Senators are worried about Larry Craig!

You guys may think Craig is some sort of pervert but that sort of inverted sense of proportion and morality is what is truly perverted. If you Republicans want proof that you are unfit to govern just look at what you rank as important and what you don’t. Larry Craig might be sad and desperate and perhaps pathetic. But what he did in that toilet is nothing! It is absolutely of no consequence compared to the last eight years of Republican rule. If you really think that Craig is a major issue then you are truly hopeless.

Every day you continue with these perverted priorities and the sham moralism that you spew out to placate fundamentalist boobs is only further proof that you don’t deserve office. The one thing, and the only thing, I regret about the Republicans getting slaughtered at the ballot box is that Democrats will win.

But you know what! These days I’d rather have Hillary than George, I’d rather have the Democrats than Theopublicans. And only a few years that statement would have been unthinkable to me. But it is thinkable now. It is a fervent wish on my part. And it is wish that millions of other people now share with me. After two terms of Ronald Reagan it looked like Republicans would build a permanent majority. Two terms of George Bush was enough to destroy it all. But then everything he touches turns to shit. He’s a scatological Midas. And that is your problem. Not Larry Craig. So, Republicans -- get a clue!