First Door on the Left

From The Idaho Statesman (the newspaper that Senator Craig blames for all his problems)…

Sen. Craig likely to make announcement Saturday morning

Sen. Larry Craig plans to make an announcement Saturday about his future.

“We haven’t quite scheduled anything, but we’re looking at doing something tomorrow,” said Craig’s spokesman Sid Smith. “We haven’t set a time or place yet.”

The clamor for Craig to step down intensified today, with the news that the Republican Party had been prepared to issue a statement calling for his resignation, a GOP source said today.

But they didn’t put it out because “party leaders had received an indication that Craig was going to step down,” on his own, the source told McClatchy Newspapers.

The Republican Party chairman, Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, was on a plane headed back from Jordan, and was not expected to comment until he returned to the U.S. Until now, Martinez has said only that Craig’s arrest and guilty plea is “disappointing” and a “sad situation.”

But the move to consider sending out a statement asking Craig to resign is sign of how worried Republicans are about the scandal, and how they would rather call on one of their own to step down than see further damage to the party’s reputation.

The chairman of the Senate Republican re-election committee, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, told reporters Thursday it would be best for the Republican Party for Craig to resign, but stopped short of calling for him to step down.

While GOP leaders in both Idaho and Washington have asked Craig to resign, Craig has given no public indication of whether – or when — that will happen.

I still maintain that if the Republicans force Larry Craig to resign, they should do the same to David Vitter.

Fair is fair, after all.

Update: The Statesman has updated their story…

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men’s room, Republican officials said Friday. Craig will announce at a news conference in Boise Saturday morning that he will resign effective Sept. 30, four state GOP officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity…

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter appeared Friday to have already settled on a successor: Lt. Gov. Jim Risch [pictured at left], according to several Republicans familiar with internal deliberations.

Senator Craig has my sympathies. He really does. He is only six years older than me and we are from the same state (though I got out as soon as I could). I can remember when he was elected State FFA President and then National Vice President. My dad was, at the time, an FFA adviser. Craig then went on to be student body president at the University of Idaho, state congressman, United States Representative and finally Senator from the state of Idaho. It is sad to see his career end in this manner, but he really has nobody to blame but himself. He’s been living a hidden secret life all these years and it was bound to eventually catch up with him.