Can family values survive?
By MARIANNE MEANS Hearst Newspapers WASHINGTON — Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho is the latest conservative champion of so-called Republican “family values” to be exposed as a political fraud. Hypocrisy in the capital’s corridors of power is never in short supply, but Craig’s duplicity is particularly crude. A vice squad cop caught Craig in an airport men’s room making an overture widely recognized as an invitation to public sex. Craig pleaded guilty but tried to recant later with his downcast wife at his side, repeating “I am not gay”‘ and blaming it all on that favorite political villain, the prying media. Nobody believed him. He announced his resignation Saturday. The remarkable thing about this ugly episode is that his GOP colleagues, as well as President Bush and Mitt Romney, in whose campaign Craig held a leadership position, all turned instantly against him. The Republicans, it seems, are finally getting it. The mantra of moral purity invoked by the religious right is collapsing from
