Another Gift To The Dems

By Patrick Casey

Well, the Republicans have just given the Democrats another electoral gift. Republican Senator Ted Stevens has been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury.

Anyone who paid attention to political coverage of Congress over the past few years has known that this was coming. While there was word over the past year that GOP insiders were attempting to convince Stevens to step down, they couldn't even convince the man to not run for re-election. I assume that with this development, his re-election campaign will no longer be an issue. I don't want to hear any of this "I'm going to stay and fight this" garbage.

The GOP leadership should have done more to sideline Stevens before the inevitable indictments came down. Even though he served his county admirably for a long time, in recent years he became the poster-boy for why the Republicans in Congress lost their way.

Instead, the GOP has another public corruption scandal on their hands immediately before an important election. They've given another gift to the Democrats. However, there is still a way that the GOP can minimize the damage that the indictment of Steven will do.

They should force the Senator to resign immediately, giving a replacement Republican (either an appointment by Republican Governor Sarah Palin or a candidate in the fall) an easy road against any Democrat contender. The GOP should then compare Steven's resignation to Democratic Congressman William Jefferson's refusal to do the same when he was indicted last year.

There's still time to get in front of this.