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GOP says no double standard on Craig

The party said he admitted guilt but a 2d senator cited by Democrats did not.

WASHINGTON - A Republican leader denied a double standard yesterday in pushing Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho) to resign after a sex sting guilty plea, while remaining silent over Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter's involvement with an escort service.

A key Democrat said a double standard by GOP leaders is exactly what occurred.

Sen. John Ensign, the Senate Republican campaign chairman, said Craig "admitted guilt. That is a big difference, between being accused of something and actually admitting guilt.

"David Vitter never did that. Larry Craig did," Ensign said on ABC's This Week.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Fox News Sunday, said, "I say there's a double standard. . . . don't think they'll ask him [Vitter] to resign because, of course, he'd be replaced by a Democrat. It's easier to ask Larry Craig to resign because he'd be replaced by a Republican."

Idaho has a Republican governor, who will appoint a successor to Craig. Louisiana's governor is a Democrat.

Craig pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in a men's restroom, and announced Saturday that he would leave the Senate at the end of the month. He was caught in a sex sting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June, and, despite his guilty plea, now insists he did nothing wrong.

Vitter has not been charged with a crime, although he acknowledged that his Washington telephone number was among those called several years ago by an escort service.

Prosecutors say the escort service was a prostitution ring, and have accused the woman who headed it of racketeering.

Another Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said on Fox News Sunday that Craig should try to vindicate himself.

"I'd like to see Larry Craig seek to withdraw the guilty plea, and fight the case," said Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I'd like to see him fight the case, because I think he could be vindicated."

Despite Craig's decision to leave the Senate, Democratic Senate campaign chief Charles E. Schumer of New York sought to keep the corruption issue alive. "What the American people are looking for is not a blame game, but who is trying to clean it up," Schumer said on ABC. "For six years, there was no ethics reform."