It’s time for a look at yet another example of moralistic conservatism, as it is practiced today.
From Talking Points Memo:
It’s no good for a family values Republican to get picked up on a DUI. But substantially worse to get picked
up for a DUI after leaving a gay nightclub with an unidentified man in a state vehicle.
That’s the sorry state that befell California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) early Wednesday.
In better days Ashburn, a fierce opponent of gay rights, was fighting marriage equality and organizing anti-gay marriage rallies as part of his “Traditional Family Values” campaign.
TPM also provided for us a photo gallery of, “The Scandalous Fall of the Modern Conservative Movement,” which includes:
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who was hiking up the skirt of his mistress in Buenos Aires, rather than the Appalachian Trail.
Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who adores the sacred institution of marriage, because, in his case, it comes with benefits, like the ability to know in a Biblical way a female staffer and then attempt to buy off her husband, also a staffer. Now, that is real Old Testament behavior.
Rep. Vito Fossella of New York, another “values conservative” who not only can’t hold his liquor—DUI arrests are the ultimate giveaway—but whose family values don’t include his own family—a love child with another woman is the ultimate giveaway.
State Rep. Bob Allen of Florida was the co-chair of John McCain’s 2008 Florida effort and, well, I’ll let TPM explain this one, which it calls a “Double Feature!”:
Allen… is arrested for offering an undercover cop $20 for the privilege of performing oral sex on him. He later says he was afraid of becoming a “statistic,” as he thought the black cop was a mugger. Allen previously advocated keeping gay couples from adopting children and applying stiffer penalties for lewd acts. The same month, Glenn Murphy Jr., president of the Young Republican National Federation who advised GOP-ers to use gay marriage as a wedge issue, is accused of trying to perform oral sex on a sleeping 22-year-old man. In 1998, a young man had filed an uncannily similar report against Murphy.
Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, who, it turns out, just had a inordinately wide urination posture, despite pleading guilty to “disorderly conduct for soliciting sex from an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.”
Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, a believer in abstinence education, is unfortunately a believer in abstinence for the other guys, so that he can have unfettered access to Washington D.C.’s “high-end” escort services.
Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader who often 
bashed homosexuality because the Bible told him so, apparently didn’t think the Bible’s injunctions against male prostitution applied to him, nor did the conservative movement’s anti-drug policy, since methamphetamine was apparently the drug of choice for the now-repentant and former pastor.
Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada has been accused of being a serial violator of his family values, including “assaulting a woman in a parking garage by throwing her against a wall and threatening to rape her.” A quick Wikipedia exam of Gov. Gibbons makes entertaining reading.
There’s more, but you get the point. TPM didn’t bother to include the likes of Newt Gingrich, or our own Roy Blunt, who honor and value marriage so much that they decided to dump their wives and try it again—in the case of Gingrich, again and again. Or how about family values defender, the thrice-married, thrice-divorced Rush Limbaugh?
If only conservatives would give us a break from the pro-family, anti-homosexual moralizing that figures so prominently in their appeal to values-oriented voters on the right, we could spend more time focusing on other matters, like keeping mammoth players in the health insurance industry and the financial industry from swallowing up families, both Republican and Democratic, both gay and straight.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
ansonburlingame
/ March 5, 2010Duane,
For God’s sake, now where is your list of Democrats with similar problems. Do you really think either side has a corner on the market of unethical conduct, real or not yet proven.
Anson
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johnnykaje
/ March 5, 2010When the Democratic party becomes the party of puritanical peeping-tom busybodies, then we’ll care about their sex lives. The hypocrisy is what gives it the spicy flavor.
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Duane Graham
/ March 5, 2010I couldn’t have said it better myself, Kaje.
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Anonymous
/ March 5, 2010For God’s sake, Duane, don’t you realize that some readers cannot distinguish between fundamental immorality and the supporting vice of hypocrisy?
As many critics (including a number of members of ‘Family Values Failures’) noted during Clinton’s scandal, it isn’t as much the naughty as it is the lying about it.
As for the list of Democrats who are, more than mere skirt-chasers, moralizing hypocrites who exploit for $ the sincere values of their ba$e: that is such an easy list to provide, that someone will very quickly volunteer a lengthy summary of comparable indiscretions. That is what substantive dialogue is all about.
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Duane Graham
/ March 6, 2010I suspect we will be waiting a long time for such a list.
Duane
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ansonburlingame
/ March 6, 2010Duane,
I suppose the point of all this is to show that Democrats are more moral, ethical, less hypocritical and less arrogant in their behavor than Republicans.
Without wasting my time making doing the research making a list, I suspect, but do not attempt to prove, that both groups are human beings and thus equally prone to human shortcomings.
To some degree all politicians are hypocritcal and shade the truth in rhetoric. Now you seem to want to argue over the tendancy of one side to trump the other in such matters. Why, I ask?
I will however spend a lot of my time researching and pondering the policies from both sides as well as others.
John F. Kennedy was a true womanizer according to all accounts and may well have engaged crimminals in his political efforts. Do such characteristics make his policies repugnant?
Anson
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Duane Graham
/ March 6, 2010Anson,
Maybe you didn’t read Kaje’s comment, so here it is:
You see, I don’t think John Kennedy attempted to sell himself as a family values kind of guy. I don’t think there are too many Democrats these days who claim their party is the repository of biblical morality, including being faithful to your wife. That’s the difference.
There is, of course, hypocrisy on the Democratic side. It has more to do with being the party of government, but failing to pay the taxes to support it. Something like the trouble Charlie Rangel is in right now.
But the worse kind of hypocrisy, in my opinion, is trying to pretend you are holier-than-thou, or that your party is, and then divorcing your wife while she is fighting cancer, like Newt Gingrich did to his, I think, first wife.
Duane
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kb
/ March 6, 2010Besides the holier than thou aspect of all this that the GOP represents, lets not ignore the other elephant in the room. No offense to the Sen. Widestance crowd, but at least the Dems chase females!
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ansonburlingame
/ March 7, 2010Duane,
One last shot and then will go elsewhere to muse. Both side can be hypocritical. Take into account Christian hypocrisy (do not practice what you preach) and I will conceded great hypocrisy on the part of some Republicans but certainly not all of them. But I could counter that with the famous bridge over which many Kennedy’s traveled and go on from there. Again, why bother.
One characteristic that neither party shares and both are saddedly lacking in is HUMILITY.
Can you imagine a political world dominated by humility?
Anson
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