With the revelations that Senator John Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Republicans both, have been engaging in marital infidelities some in the media have found themselves unable to contain their glee at having the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of members of a party that emphasizes family values being caught in flagrante.
Of course, many Democrats have also been caught with their pants down, but unless their infidelities involved law-breaking it didn't cost them their careers because, well, Democrats don't profess to have high moral standards, or something. Evidently it's not hypocritical when Dems cheat on their spouses because they don't say that one shouldn't do such things.
It's not the infidelity itself, we're told, it's the hypocrisy of touting family values while cheating on one's spouse that makes the Republican offenses so egregious. Okay, but if it were really true that it's the hypocrisy that sends some precincts of the media into transports of pious self-righteousness why do they not likewise slam all those in the Democratic party who demand that we pay our taxes while they avoid paying theirs? Why is a legal, albeit immoral, affair a career-ender for Republicans, but illegal tax delinquency is just a speed bump for Democrats? If hypocrisy is the issue what can be more hypocritical than the man in charge of writing the tax laws (Charley Rangel) and the man in charge of enforcing them (Timothy Geithner) both failing to pay their own taxes? Why is that not a career-ender for these two malefactors?
Is there something about being a person of the left that makes it impossible for them to see their own hypocrisy in pillorying Mark Sanford while giving certain Democrats, whose offenses are not only hypocritical but also illegal, a pass?
RLC
