Many observers are seeing some stark discrepancies in the reaction of the GOP and conservative pundits to the Craig revelations as opposed to the Vitter story. First, let's review just how far out to dry the GOP has hung Craig:
That's just for starters. I'm not even going to delve into the rightwingosphere and their foaming at the mouth over Craig. So what about Vitter? Hardly a peep. There's been a lot of speculation that it's because Vitter's scandal is straight, Craig's gay. And that's undoubtedly a significant part of the story for a GOP that has built a lot of political capital with the "base" by demonizing gays.
But there's a critical and very basic political calculation here, that I think probably gets more to the heart of the matter. On this, I'm with Scott and Kevin on this one:
...I think Scott Lemieux is merely stating the obvious with his alternative explanation:
In the specific case of Hewitt, though, there's probably a more important factor: Louisiana's governor is a Democrat, and Idaho's is a Republican. Craig resigning would mean a Republican incumbent going into the 2008 election; Vitter resigning would mean another Democratic Senator. So no conservative pundit should get credit for standing on principle for demanding that Craig resign, and that goes triple if they haven't made the same call for Vitter (who actually violated the law, although he did so in a more heterosexual way that will help to earn forgiveness from conservatives.)
Does anyone seriously want to argue that Scott is off base here? Of course conservatives are turning against Craig secure in the knowledge that they're running no actual political risk.
It's not just the conservative pundits, it's the GOP leadership. They can do math, too. Particularly considering that Democrat Tim Johnson is coming back to work next month.