You've got to be kidding me. On Meet the Press, GOP "sage" Mike Murphy, who has been on the payrolls of John McCain and Mitt Romney, decided to blow off some steam about all the fallout from the sexual hypocrisy of anti-gay pols in his party by blaming the messenger -- bloggers who dare to talk about or reveal the dual lives of legislators and elected officials that work hard to deny civil equality to LGBT citizens, while trolling for same-sex encounters or who are on their second, third (and counting) "sacred" marriages. (NBC):
MR. SHRUM: ...people are going to laugh if these wonderful family values candidates like Giuliani and Thompson get up there and start talking about these issues.
MR. MURPHY: Yeah, but there’s an ugliness in all this, too. I, I think Craig is an unsympathetic figure. But there has been this case of bloggers on the far left trying to expose closeted politicians if they don’t fall completely into lockstep with a certain liberal gay agenda. And I think that’s unfair. It’s a form of McCarthyism, really.
MR. SHRUM: Don’t you think the ugliness was voting against the hate crimes bill, as Craig did...
MR. MURPHY: No, no, no, but what Dems do is...
MR. SHRUM: ...and then going into a men’s bathroom...
MR. MURPHY: This is -- no, it’s...
MR. SHRUM: ...and soliciting a police officer?
MR. MURPHY: Of course, that was ugly, but, but the point is, there is a tendency to apply an identity politics test now, which, which has a real chilling effect on politics, that somebody’s private life has--or their, their race or their gender or their orientation--has to dictate where they stand politically. If you’re a woman, you have to be a pro-choice Democrat. I mean, that calculation cheapens politics, and it’s unfair to people in public life who do have private lives.
Talk about hypocrites. Where do you begin? No one is saying Larry Craig needed to support gay rights. As a far-right conservative elected on a "family values" agenda, it's pretty clear that he wasn't going to be on our side of the issues. What isn't acceptable is for the man to be out trolling for sex with men in a restroom, then heading off to the Senate floor to vote against taxpaying LGBT citizens. If a pol cannot reconcile his sexual desires, is full of self-loathing and takes it out on others who are able to separate sex acts from sexual orientation, IMHO that pol isn't psychologically stable enough be given such legislative power to vote on such matters. The public does have an interest in the sexual hypocrisy of legislators as long as their efforts continue to legislate against the privacy rights of individuals and deny civil rights to a group of citizens.
They need to stop peeping and leering into our bedrooms and get to the business of solving this country's real problems.
James Carville was also on MTP; he brings up the GOP's eager drop-kick of the loyal conservative Larry Craig:
Ah, schadenfreude.
MR. RUSSERT: James Carville, in 1999 Larry Craig was on this program talking about William Jefferson Clinton, the president of the United States, and his behavior. This is the way Senator Craig talked about the president.
(Videotape, January 24, 1999)
SEN. CRAIG: And I will tell you that the Senate certainly can bring about a censure resolution, and it's a slap on the wrist. It's a "Bad boy, Bill Clinton, you're a naughty boy." The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state who, in the majority, think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.
(End videotape)
MR. JAMES CARVILLE: You know, I've said many times that those who are not willing to give pardon and mercy are those that don't need pardon and mercy. Clearly, Senator Craig is not one of these people, nor, I suspect, is anybody on this television set or are very few people like that. And I couldn't -- I remember that, as you remember a lot of things. And I remember that people know the way that he, he used gays in, in terms of gay marriage or gays in the military. He was very, very far out there. And I think the American public has really sort of turned against this kind of thing, and I think he was exposed for being the kind of hypocrite that he was. By the same token, you could not look at that event yesterday and be a human being and not feel sorry for that man, to some extent, and feel sorry for his family. But, you know, the, the message here is just shut your mouth and lead the life. And I think that's what the American people want, want, want people to do.
What I found extraordinary about this is nobody came out and defended this guy. I mean, nobody said, "He's a good man, done a bad thing." "Here's a decent guy who's obviously been struggling with a problem." "Here's somebody who"-- I mean, nobody. No Republican, no, no, no, no operative, no journalist. Nobody said, "Well, Larry Craig's got nothing." And I mean, they didn't throw him under the bus, they hit him with the bus. I mean, he's like, boom! Flattened him.
Yes. All of Larry's friends, those fellow back-slapping pols, rushed for the exits as fast as they could.
