LOLcraig(graphic via SteveAudio)

In spite of his heated denials today, Senator Craig has left quite a trail of slime over the years. Editor and Publisher has the scoop on the rumors, the repeated accusations, and the Idaho senator's persistent efforts to bury the truth.

In its story today about Craig's arrest, the Statesman revealed that it had uncovered evidence of other Craig liaisons or sexual advances, including allegations that he had sex with a man in a Union Station bathroom in Washington, D.C., but had not previously reported it. "Until Monday, the Statesman had declined to run a story about Craig's sex life, because the paper didn't have enough corroborating evidence and because of the senator's steadfast denial."

But the paper also revealed, "Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages. The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington's Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig "cruised" him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear, or unverifiable."

In other words, the evidence was out there all along. When activist Mike Rogers posted a report last October examining Senator Craig's lengthy list of sexual indiscretions with men, it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck, so of course, Big Media and the Right Wing Noise Machine pronounced it...a swimming chicken. "Senator Craig isn't gay, he just sucks a lot of cock. That doesn't really make a guy gay, does it?"

Glenn Greenwald:

Nonetheless, it is hard to overstate the intense fury that this pre-election report triggered from the Right -- not at Senator Craig for engaging in this behavior, but at Rogers for reporting it. A virtually unanimous chorus on the Right furiously insisted that nothing could be more irrelevant than whether the married family values Senator had sex with men in bathrooms (acts that are simultaneously criminal and adulterous). The same political movement that impeached Bill Clinton and which has made a living exploiting issues of private morality for political gain insisted that Rogers had reached a new and despicable low in politics even by reporting this.

Of course, now that the writing is on the (bathroom) wall, the same cabal of mealy-mouthed Righty scolds are baying for Craig's resignation, and they're only stopping there because they can't get away with openly calling for his execution. Although I feel fairly confident that Ace of Spades, some Red State mouth-breather, or another barely functional "Compassionate Conservative" will get around to it in the next few days. One thing you can always count on from America's Junior Fascist brigades, they always Go There.

But back to their reactions from October when we first tried to warn them:

And at least at the time, Barnett was right. Among right-wing pundits -- weeks before the election -- there was nothing but support for Craig and outrage over the reporting of this story. The most hysterical outrage of all was from Glenn Reynolds, who went so far as repeatedly to predict -- literally -- that the country would be so repulsed by Rogers' reporting that it might actually swing the election in favor of the Republicans.

(...)

As usual, Bush-supporting bloggers like Ann Althouse and Patterico dutifully echoed Reynolds' line: "I truly believe this sort of tactic is going to create a backlash." Identically, Michelle Malkin's Hot Air actually convinced itself, as Reynolds did, that the Craig report was so despicable that it might save the GOP from defeat:

Three kids, nine grandkids. Supposedly spending his leisure time in the men's room at Union Station. . . . It's been said before but it bears repeating: the left always finds a way to shoot itself in the foot. Patterico expects a backlash. So do I. In fact, I haven't felt this motivated to vote in weeks. . . . .

If a U.S. Senator was going to have a tryst -- especially a gay tryst -- would he really do it in the men's room of one of the busiest places in D.C.?

Um, yeah. Have you not yet noticed that the man isn't very smart? This is more than clearly evinced by his decision to stand and fight in the face of overwhelming evidence that he's a nasty old pervert who gets his jollies planting his knees in pools of stale urine on public restroom floors and fellating total strangers. La Malkin, of course, is slow to pick up on this salient fact about the Senior Senator from Idaho because she's not exactly on the short list for a Nobel Prize, either, poor little addle-headed thing.

I guess it would be too much to ask back in 1982 that Craig be kicked to the curb when he was accused of molesting underage Congressional pages. Perhaps timely intervention a quarter-century ago could have prevented the mess that was the Mark Foley scandal, not to mention providing some scrap of evidence (however small) that boy-rape is not part and parcel with the Republican attitude toward underage pages.

But, whatever. Doubtless the waves of young boys who were improperly solicited and seduced by members of Congress in the intervening two and a half decades were little "beasts" as Matt Drudge says, who were egging the older men on and deserved whatever they got.

If the Republicans get any more sick, venal, and corrupt, their constituents may as well just start electing hyenas and poisonous snakes to Congress. Who could tell the difference?