EVEN HYPOCRISY CAN BE DEFENDED-- IF YOU'RE FAR ENOUGH TO THE RIGHT

There aren't many on the far right who are defending Larry Craig. As he prepares his September 30 resignation letter, Republican partisans are breathing a sigh of relief that the image of an arch-conservative Republican senator in a public john playing footsie with a strange man under the stall divider will probably fade from the voters' collective memories long before election day. The most opportunistic and amoral of all Republicans, Piece of Mitt, has already figured out how to make the incident work for his ruthless campaign for the presidency. Norm Coleman and Susan Collins, two of the most endangered rubber stamp Republican senators, have donated the lobbyist money Craig had laundered for their campaigns to charities.

But one extremist wingnut, aging culture warrior Pat Buchanan, asks an interesting question about hypocrisy. So what, he wonders, if it is true and Craig was living a double life-- crusading against gay dignity and equality by day, seeking out anonymous bathroom sex by night?

Is there no possibility a man can believe in traditional morality, yet find himself tempted to behavior that morally disgusts him? Is it impossible Craig is driven by impulses, the biblical "thorn in the flesh," of which Paul wrote, to behavior he almost cannot control?

Why else would a United States senator take the incredible risk of disgracing himself and humiliating his family, and ending his career, for a few minutes of anonymous sex in an airport men's room?

It is this kind of thinking, so pervasive in the thinking of today's unwashed Republican elites that has disgusted young people and turned them away from the party in droves. This kind of bigoted hate passing for some kind of moral code has no place in the modern world. It will die off with the Buchanans, Romneys and Craigs the way it has in much of the world.