The story of Larry Craig’s bathroom sex scandal slammed into the news and around the world so quickly that even the most casual of onlookers felt relieved when last Saturday he announced his intent to resign.

This resignation seemed to echo his guilty plea in August, which stood out as one shining moment of truth in the swirl of his dim deceptions this summer.

And now, like the guilty plea, even that resignation has become uncertain. This week Craig’s office announced that if he’s successful in having the plea dismissed, he will not leave office on Sept. 30.

Craig has a right to pursue a legal remedy. He and his attorneys can take the appropriate steps to attempt to restore his reputation.

But it’s unfair for Craig to continue to perform the role of Idaho senator while dealing with these distractions. It’s not fair to voters who applauded his resignation announcement, it’s not fair to the governor who must replace him, and it’s not fair to the Senate itself.

Many in the Republican Party raced to distance themselves from Craig after this story broke. But if there is any good to come from this scandal, it will hinge on the capacity of his party’s members to dwell on its meaning.

They should examine the deep price they pay for their stance as arbiters of personal morality. By setting up Republican politicians as rigid models of moral superiority, they also set themselves up as targets for repeated charges of hypocrisy, each one louder and more embarrassing than the last. Surely this episode should be enough to persuade them to return instead to their basic values as the party of small, efficient government and individual liberty.

On Wednesday, Craig’s lawyers asked the Senate ethics committee to dismiss the complaint against him. That would be a mistake. By flashing his U.S. Senate business card and asking a police officer, “What do you think about that?” Craig made this an appropriate matter for the committee.

The senator’s own deceptions continue to disguise the truth. A transcript of the arrest shows him charging the police officer with solicitation, rather than the other way around, then insisting he had no idea any solicitation was going on. He deceived his family and friends by failing to mention the incident. And just last Saturday he misled Idaho voters and the American public by only appearing to resign.

If Craig was wrongly accused in June, he should have firmly asserted the truth and fought the charges then. By expecting the public to pay for the deceptions that have swirled around him ever since, he fails one core tenet of the party he represents: personal responsibility.

A prompt resignation gives Craig one last chance to display just that.