Can I Get a Do-Over?

If there is anything else as reliable as death and taxes, it's that politics is strange. Senator Larry Craig (R - Idaho) seems to be trying to pull out of his nose dive before impact, and is now hinting that he might undo his announced resignation from the Senate, and fight to overturn his guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge in Minnesota. Given my understanding of this hullabaloo, there's the idea in the public that Senator Craig's actions up until this point indicate that he could very well be a closet homosexual. Therefore there could be some value in seeking to shed that label by fighting, either until victory, or until the bitter end. Personally, I don't think that it will work. It's going to take a lot more than that (say, divine intervention) to get people to give up that idea - in large part because so many people want to believe it - and one would think that someone with the savvy to be elected to the United States Senate would be bright enough to understand that. Senator Arlen Specter's (R - Pennsylvania) comments notwithstanding, it's unlikely that at this point even an acquittal in a jury trail would "exonerate" Senator Craig. After all, remember how well that worked for O. J. Simpson. The legal system can say whatever it wants, but the Court of Public Opinion has already handed down a verdict, and the best that Senator Craig can really hope for is to have been considered to have "beaten the rap." Which, of course, won't do much to placate Senate Republicans, who are trying desperately to burnish their collective reputation as the 2008 election cycle grinds on.