It was never easy being a singing senator. Maybe they were jinxed, by jiminy.

Back around the turn of the century, four Republican senators formed a barbershop quartet called the Singing Senators. The singers were bass Trent Lott of Mississippi, baritone John Ashcroft of Missouri, tenor Jim Jeffords of Vermont and lead Larry Craig of Idaho.

The first hint of trouble in the quartet came in 2000 when Senator Ashcroft lost his reelection bid—to a dead man, as I recall. Ashcroft returned to Washington as attorney general, possibly the worst attorney general we ever had until the next one.

Then, in 2001, tenor Jeffords quit the party and the quartet could no longer use its nickname, “the vocal majority”, as Jeffords’ defection cost the Republicans control of the Senate.

But the party came back and the Singing Senators’ bass became Senate majority leader until, in a moment of irrational exuberance at Strom Thurmond’s hundredth birthday party, he allowed the country would have been better off had the arch segregationist Thurmond been elected president in 1948.

And now, the lead singer has fallen. Craig, one of those family values Republicans who has been an outspoken opponent of gays, was arrested in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport after allegedly soliciting an undercover cop in the adjoining stall.

As the senators used to sing,

“There goes Jack, there goes Jim,
Down to lovers’ lane,

Now and then, we meet again,
But they don’t seem the same.”