The politics of hypocrisy: How scandal is treated with selective outrage
Erick Erickson, the longtime, ultraconservative Atlanta radio host, just unloaded a screed that whacked both Democrats and Republicans. "Both sides serve up a crap sandwich of a candidate, point across the aisle at the other side’s crap sandwich, and insist you have to eat theirs because the other one is worse."In keeping with the culinary metaphor, this struck me because I've long felt that national politics has increasingly become a stew of hypocrisy. To watch Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders endorse Graham Platner, the exceedingly weird Maine Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo, was stomach-turning.You just know the liberal wing would have savaged him if he was a Republican.
They and other Dems finally jumped off the bandwagon when news emerged that Platner's former girlfriend alleged that he had raped her. TRUMP TO MEET WITH MAMDANI IN NEW YORK AMID HIGH-STAKES MIDTERM PUSHGraham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S.Senate in Maine, points to a covered tattoo that had previously been an image recognized as a Nazi symbol, during an interview on Wednesday in Portland, Maine.
(WGME via AP)Republicans were behind North Carolina Rep.Chuck Edwards despite mounting allegations that he had fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment. But then the House ethics committee called for his censure for inappropriate actions toward two female staffers.
The congressman showered them with gifts (jewelry totaling over $1,000, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and cell phone, KitchenAid mixer, robotic vacuums, vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners, if you must know).His fellow North Carolina lawmaker, Sen.Ted Budd, then urged Edwards to bow out of the race, and the congressman quickly complied. "Cycle after cycle," Erickson says, "we never get better candidates.
We get more corrupt and more terrible ones, and we are told once again that we must vote for them or the republic will fall...The doomsday proph...