Larry Craig's "Stalling" Overshadows Surge, Bush Called Him a "Goddamned Traitor" in '05

Posted by Jane Hamsher at 5:20 AM on September 6, 2007.

This post, written by Jane Hamsher, originally appeared on FireDogLake

Last night, after Larry Craig announced he was "reconsidering" his resignation and the audio tape to his lawyer weirdly surfaced, a commenter at TPM made this trenchant observation:

If Sen. Larry Craig reconsiders and steps all over Gen. Petraeus' week of surge, Bill Kristol's head will explode. That Pentagon media war room they set up will be useless in the face of this cable TV zoo.

John Amato and I were sitting around here at the super secret Crooks & Liars batcave last night when we read this and started giggling like schoolgirls because it was so true. And predictably, this morning we were watching The Today Show and after only a few fleeting moments of the German terror alert, the subject was once again...Larry Craig.

Right now Bush is trying to hold the Republicans behind the surge, because gawd forbid they succumb to pressure in an election year and embarrass him by putting some kind of limit on his ability to fill body bags. Hence surrogates like Ari Fleischer are dispatched to produce ads shaming Republicans into supporting Bush's pet war, and the number one target (dollar-wise) was Arlen Specter's back yard -- to the tune of nearly a million and a half dollars.

This article that Julia found from 2005 on Bush's relationship to Larry Craig was illuminating for a lot of reasons:

Bush is also angry with Craig, a conservative who joined with Democrats in a filibuster to defeat permanent renewal of the Patriot Act. As a meeting recently, Bush referred to Craig as "a goddamned traitor" and told the National Republican Senatorial Committee to start recruiting someone to run against the Idaho Senator in 2008.

Such anger against those who dare oppose him is typical for a President who all too often launches into obscene tirades when his policies are questioned. Bush, on many occasions, has called political opponents "traitors" and, in private, refers to Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter as a "lily-livered bastard."

Bush's petulant, childish bullying tactics may have reached around and bit him in the ass this time. In the wake of the all-out effort to relentlessly push him off the stage, Larry now seems defiant -- emboldened by the support of, yes, Arlen Specter, who just may not be so happy about those ads running in his back yard and everything they symbolize. General Petraeus' carefully choreographed 9/11 report on teh most awesome surge, aided and abetted by a phalanx of compromised and credulous pundits, PR spinners, think tank personel and other assorted wankers may go down in a blaze of Larry Craig's bathroom stall glory.

Call it "the revenge of the lily-livered bastard."

UPDATE: TPM Election Central reports that Mitch McConnell still has a place in his heart (and the Senate) for Senator Craig should he be exonerated of the charges against him. You have to wonder what Craig might have on ol' Mitch that would be incentive enough to bring him back into the fold, don't you?

UPDATE II Craig Aide Says He's Likely to Leave

WASHINGTON — Sen. Larry Craig has all but dropped any notion of trying to complete his term, and is focused on helping Idaho send a new senator to Washington within a few weeks, his top spokesman said Thursday.

"The most likely scenario, by far, is that by October there will be a new senator from Idaho," Craig spokesman Dan Whiting told the Associated Press.

The only circumstances in which Craig might try to complete his term, Whiting said, would require a prompt overturning of his conviction for disorderly conduct in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport, as well as Senate GOP leaders' agreement to restore Craig's committee leaderships posts taken away this week.

Those scenarios are unlikely, Whiting said.

Tagged as: bush, iraq war, patriot act, petraeus, craig

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.