infinite improbability

Political Double Standard

I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning (he's the only talk radio guy I'll listen to--he's conservative, but doesn't follow the party line on everything). Anyway, Glenn Beck was talking about the allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger groped multiple women over the past 30 years. He was having a fit that conservatives are acting like it doesn't matter, and that instead of dealing with the reality of the accusations they are questioning the timing--just like Clinton supporters did in the time leading up to the 1994 election when all the "bimbo eruptions" were coming out. Beck was saying that it doesn't matter that Arnold is a Republican, if he's a womanizer, it draws serious questions upon his character and what kind of governor he will be.

Stepping back from the Arnold Schwarzenegger situation to take a broader look at American politics, this isn't the first time that the same Republicans that criticized Clinton looked the other way when people in their party were doing the same thing. Hardly a word was said when Newt Gingrich ditched his second wife after having an affair with a much younger staffer, despite the fact that he was one of the primary Clinton attackers. And, in local Florida politics, several years back (also during the peak of the Clinton scandal), the chairman of the Florida Senate telecommunications committee had an affair with a telecom lobbyist at the same time that the committee was considering telecom deregulation. You'd think that people would complain, considering that the guy is not only cheating on his wife, it's a major conflict of interest when the guy in charge of deregulating the telecoms is sleeping with a telecom lobbyist. Did anybody complain? No. Why? Because he was a powerful Republican from a strongly Republican county and it doesn't behoove people to bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.

You can't attack a guy on one hand and say that he's a characterless bum because he's a womanizer and then turn around a few years later and try to elect a known womanizer just because he's in your party.