It’s weird for the Senate to get holier-than-thou about this given that one sitting senator is a family values advocate with a taste for hookers and that there was a bipartisan love-in staged on the occasion of Ted Stevens, convicted felon, departing from the Senate. If these guys can get weepy about Stevens, surely they can handle the vague air of impropriety hanging around Burris.
It’s not weird in the slightest. This appointment was made by someone who has been caught on tape trying to sell the very seat in question. Even if you think personal sex lives should constitute a legitimate case for expulsion, you’d still have to admit there’s a massive difference in both degree and kind between these two cases. Furthermore, the Senate was fully prepared to expunge Stevens. His colleagues paying tribute to him after it was clear he had been removed through less catastrophic means has nothing to do with their willingness to kick him to the curb if it had been necessary – left-wing blog freakout on this issue notwithstanding.
On another note, how embarrassing is the attempt to turn this Burris appointment into a battle over race? Obviously Blagojevic is the primary villain in all this, but if you’re Burris (accepting the offer) or Rush (fulminating about the refusal to seat Burris as an attempt to “lynch” him), how exactly can you look at yourself in the mirror this morning?
It’s going to be aggravating beyond belief if this whole ridiculous mess makes people so angry at the Democrats that the voters go red in 2010 simply out of anger at all this.