GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is scrubbing his campaign of anything scented with the increasingly foul presence of one U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.

 

Creepy Craig appears to be something of a Men’s Room McLovin.

 

According to the Washington Post and other media, Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after a reportedly lewd incident in a Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport men’s room earlier this summer. Iowa Independent contributor Garance Franke-Ruta has an interesting post on this on her Web site as does the blogger Howling Latina.

 

Here is what The Washington Post reports:

Roll Call, citing a copy of a report by airport police, said that officers had been conducting a sting operation inside the men's room because of complaints of sexual activity there. The police report gives this account of the arrest:

The undercover officer was monitoring the restroom at noon on June 11. A few minutes later, Craig entered and sat in the stall next to him. Craig began tapping his right foot, touched his right foot to the left foot of the officer in the stall next to him and brushed his hand beneath the partition between them. He was then arrested.

You just can’t make up a narrative like that.

Craig has stepped down from his role as head of Romney’s effort in Idaho and as Senate liaison for the former Massachusetts governor.

That said, the Idaho Republican is maintaining that police “misconstrued” his movements in the restroom. Any man in America knows this denial is absurd. Having been in, oh, say, thousands of men’s rooms (for normal-business-hours reasons), I’ve never had any of my actions “misunderstood.” The rules (which you learn in first grade) are simple: at the urinal, look straight ahead, don’t glance down and, even a toilet paper outage is not reason enough to reach under to an inhabited stall next to you.

Will the last straight Republican man please turn the lights off?