God is not a Republican. God has not made Republican politicians into a race of supermen beyond the temptations of ordinary mortals. The Republicans have entered the era of postmoralism--with the much married Rudy Giulani as their Presidential frontrunner--and it is getting extremely uncomfortable for them.
Larry Craig may or may not resign from the Senate. If he does not resign, he may or may not seek the Republican nomination for re-election in 2008. Whatever his personal fate, he has sealed the fate of the Republican Party: they have lost the image of the party of strict father morality, of toughness, of incorruptible rectitude, and it will be extremely difficult for them to get it back.
The Republicans have long been the party of the external threat. Immigrants, communists, labor unions, criminals, media, protestors, rioters, radicals, terrorists all at one time or another have served the political purpose of providing a target for them to rail against.
Republican victories, it has long been argued, serve the interest of people who look like "us," think like "us." Democrats have always been suspect in some quarters as not being the party of good and righteous people who rightfully fear the judgment of God and act accordingly. Democrats have been seen as being too mired in complexity--being George Wallace's "pointy headed intellectuals," for instance--to be worthy of voter trust.
But it is the complexities of modern life that are leaving all too many Republicans in the dust. Much of modern life is spent in annonymous temporary communities through technologies both connecting and distancing simultaneously. Larry Craig was exposed through his air and train travel.
Mark Foley's email did him in. Bob Packwood never understood the concept of sexual harassment of employees, that regular contact did not guarantee personal intimacy. Bill O'Reilly could not understand how he could have both a large national fan club in love with his media persona and an employee who knew him well resistant to his advances.
The Democratic Party is not a party of saints. But Democrats seem much more likely to go to churches and other houses of worship that openly welcome sinners. Democrats seem much less likely to believe that one absolves one's own sins by attacking or demonizing or otherwise tearing down others. The Democratic Party today is the party of both personal responsibility and societal responsibility.
Democrats are ultimately the party that faces reality. Democrats are much less likely to believe that it is enough to position oneself against evil; Democrats tend to seek to actually achieve results. It is hard to speak of counterfactual history with any degree of certainty, but it is hard to believe that President Al Gore would still be looking for Osama bin Laden in 2007, or that President Gore would embrace the low factual content in official optimism about Iraq.
Despite its weaknesses, the Democratic Party is ultimately America's only true governing party. It is far from having all the answers, but it admits to the existence of questions. It recognizes effective strategies against social deviance of any kind require much, much more than punishment. It seeks not only to be the majority governing party, but it seeks to genuinely represent the interests of America as a whole.
The Republicans can or cannot dump Larry Craig as they see fit. But they cannot easily dump a mentality that holds that all the problems are external, and that any internal problem must be made an external problem.
This is a view that denies the base of knowledge available to college educated and other intelligent people. This is a view that denies reality.
The Democrats are the party of reality. Hillary Clinton's predessessor Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but everyone is not entitled to his own reality." Some day, perhaps the Republican Party will institutionally come to grips with issues of personal and social morality in a constructive and uplifting manner. In the meantime, the voters will increasingly reject the idea that those who stigmatize others for failures of character are themselves of noble character.