IMPEACH BUSH

If you are a politician who wants to engage in an extramarital sex romp, the GOP is the place to be.

As long as you pick a lover of the opposite sex and keep the number of liaisons discreetly low, fellow Republicans won't rush to oust you.

But know this: Should there be even a whiff of homosexual goings-on, you're toast.

The Republican Taliban will come after you, wearing a "breastplate of righteousness" that blinds the public with its glare and hides something deeper.

That's a lesson to take away from the scandal surrounding Larry Craig, the senator from Idaho who recently pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Craig got nabbed in a sex sting in a men's airport restroom. He might have fared better had he pulled this stunt in the ladies' room and confessed to having a severe weakness for women in red-hot stilettos.

For Republicans, carnal indiscretions, more likely than not, get a pass when they involve heterosexuals.

The late Republican Congresswoman from Idaho, Helen Chenoweth-Hage, admitted to having an affair with a married man in the 1980s. That revelation didn't prevent her from getting re-elected.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a devout Catholic, was convicted for DUI when he was a lieutenant governor and lost his marriage a year after meeting a Miss Idaho USA winner who was more than two decades his junior. They married last year. None of that has been a big problem for his fellow Republicans in a "red" state.

Former Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon might have survived allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward female employees while in office, but the number of accusers was too big to push under a rug: 17.

It is human nature to fall in and out of love, have affairs, trample marriage vows and end up in divorce court.

But the Republican Party, in seeking to appeal to its Christian conservative base, has claimed a mantle of moral superiority. It has framed homosexuality as the unforgivable sin -- worse than adultery between a man and a woman -- even though adultery isn't exactly in keeping with the party's "family values" mantra.

For an elected GOP official treading water in a sea of scandal, the added specter of gayness becomes the sinking weight around the neck.

Remember Spokane Mayor Jim West? The closeted gay Republican was recalled from office after news reports claimed he trolled for young men on the Internet. West suggested that being openly gay in Eastern Washington spelled trouble.

And now we have Craig, who keeps insisting he isn't gay -- never was, never will be.

To be fair, Democrats aren't immune.

Jim McGreevey was the boy-wonder governor of New Jersey until he stepped down after announcing he had an extramarital affair with a man on his staff.

But here's the thing with Democrats: As a matter of platform or policy, they don't go around assailing homosexuality the way Republicans do -- so much that even gays in the GOP are forced to lead double lives on the down low.

Worse, GOP leaders have that "breastplate of righteousness" -- a phrase published in the 1970s by Laud Humphreys, an American sociologist who studied gay public sexual encounters.

Humphreys, whose work was quoted in a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, described the breastplate as having "a particular shiny quality, a refulgence, which tends to blind the audience."

Humphreys wrote: "The secret offender may well believe he is more righteous than the next man, hence his shock and outrage, his disbelieving indignation, when he is discovered and discredited."

Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, who is embroiled in a sex scandal, knows this shock and awe well -- but he's kept his job.

Being a Republican senator in a state where the Democratic governor would pick his successor should Vitter fall is part of the political calculation that has silenced party criticism and helped him survive.

The other part is this: Vitter was linked to hookers who are female, not male.

For the GOP, such a revelation is a glancing blow off the shiny breastplate that shields the party's heart of hypocrisy.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com.