National Review: Ted Stevens Should Resign
I agree, though I think conservatives should have been a bit more adamant about this starting more than a few years ago.
One of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’s most memorable moments of the last few years came during the Senate fight over the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” In 2005, when Sen. Tom Coburn introduced a measure that would have redirected the money Stevens had earmarked for the bridge to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, Stevens gave an apoplectic speech on the Senate floor in which he threatened to resign if the Senate passed the measure. It was the nation’s loss that the Senate voted the measure down, simultaneously missing two opportunities.
Now that a grand jury has indicted Stevens on seven counts of making false statements, it is time for him to make good on his threat. Stevens is of course innocent until proven guilty of the crimes with which he is charged. But even if he committed no crime, the facts that have emerged over the course of the federal investigation into his personal finances are damning enough on their own. The indictment was just the last straw.
The Republican party is only as strong as its weakest link. The GOP was cast out of the majority in both houses of Congress because Americans had lost faith in the Republican brand, and Senator Ted Stevens with all his commitment to excessive, needless and borderline corrupt government spending was a big reason for that.
The GOP needs a serious house cleaning, and Senator Stevens sounds like just the place to start.
