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| Brad Blog Sept. 4, 2007 |
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| Tuesday, 04 September 2007 | |
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Shameless Hypocrisy Meets False Compassion
By Brad Hirschfield
Larry Craig has resigned, and perhaps that's a good thing...
After all, there is something odd about a guy who busied himself advocating and legislating in the name of public decency remaining in office after getting busted and pleading guilty to being indecent in public. But that is not the hypocrisy which should be occupying our minds and taking up space in the media. That honor should go to the shameless hypocrites in the Republican establishment who spent the last seventy-two hours doing everything in their power to bring about the end of Senator Craig's political career.
Republicans who have spent the last eight years campaigning as the choice for America's "values-based voters," politicians who wrapped themselves in spiritual values, apparently have no such commitments when it comes to values like forgiveness. Kentucky Senator, Mitch McConnell called Craig's acts "unforgivable" -- strange words from a man who prides himself on his commitment to traditional Christian values. Seems to me, that forgiveness is near the top of that list. I am not suggesting that Craig should not be held accountable for his actions, actions to which he admitted in a now regretted moment of honesty. But I do find it odd that instead of supporting their colleague's honesty and trying to help him both accept responibility while offering him support at the moment he did so, these guys jettisoned him like so much unwanted ballast on a leaky balloon ride, in order to save his cherished senatorial seat which he was likely to loose when he came up for reelection. And none of this even touchs the grotesque double standard that allows Louisianna's David Vitter to continue serving in the Senate after having been caught using an escort service that everyone but Vitter acknowledges was a front for a prostitution service. (Aren't they all?) I don't mind values-based voting, in fact I am all in favor of it. But it's high time to admit that for Republicans that simply means the value of keeping anyone who has ever had a homosexual encounter out of power, and keeping republicans in power, even when it means betraying all of your other values except the for these two. Of course, before the Democrats get too full of themselves, it bears pointing out that their false compassion is as ugly as the Republicans hypocrisy. Where were Democratic leaders, who should have been reaching out to support Senator Craig as a victim of the kind of sexual politics which force good men into closeted lives and unsafe sexual practices? Why were they not offering Larry Craig the support of the party which claims to be the only one to practice true compassion? Why? Because they were were too busy feeding off the political carcass left by Craig's actions and too busy smugly promoting their own aggenda which has as little to do with genuine compassion as the Republican aggenda has to do with spiritual values. The story of Larry Craig is actually a sad one, one in which the promise of the best values of neither party were realized and that's what the rest of us should be asking of the leaders of whichever party claims our votes. And whichever one does a better job of addresing those questions, is the one at which I'll be most interested come November. How about you? |
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