Good luck getting elected by appealing to the professional assassin block.
Although having Leon as your running mate would be pretty bad ass.
A politician doesn’t even have to condemn cheating to be a hypocrite upon being caught cheating. He or she need only try to convince voters that allowing gay people to marry will somehow cheapen the moral wonderland of heterosexual marriage and that telling teens not to have sex before their wedding night has zero foreseeable negative consequences.
If you want to put a firm date on it, I’d say N-E-V-E-R.
Well, let’s say I agree with this analysis.
In my view, if a message board poster is willing to apply this reasoning to the Republicans and not to equivalent issues for the Democrats, then that poster doesn’t mean what he says about those equivalent issues, and the value of his stances should be appropriately downgraded as mere posturing.
Or is “the sanctity of marriage” sui generis, with no other issue possibly being analogous?
Because he’s annoying, has run for President twice, and everybody just wants him to go away. Fuck, that man is smarmy.
OK – so why did John Edwards suffer any negative consequences from Democrats?
Or did I imagine that?
What issue is equivalent to marriage for Democrats? What issue are Democrats constantly campaigning and preaching on, and then proceeding to violate?
Inadvertent or bad joke?
John Edwards’ cheating did not make him particularly hypocritical, since he hadn’t been all about Teh Ghey and abstinence education. It did still make him a jerk for cheating on his wife, and there was also an element of “if this had come out in October when you were the nominee, we’d have been sunk, you asshole”.
What do you think the word “hypocrisy” means? What are you alleging IS hypocritical about engaging in behaviour you haven’t condemned?
I think you imagined it. I’m not aware of any negative consequences that John Edwards suffered from the Democrats. Cite?
At the time his affair became outed to the public, he held no elected office and was no longer even a candidate for one. He was just a private citizen. What are you allegng hat the Democrats did to him?
Am I not communicating in English? Republicans (not Democrats) have campaigned for years as the only party interested in upholding traditional family Christian values, including (among other things) straight monogamous relationships, as any other kind would destroy the fabric of our country. So, when Republican political leaders engage in the very behavior that they condemn in others (and in some cases, the very behavior that they have used to deny others equal civil rights), it’s much more hypocritical than when someone engages in the behavior but is NOT a member of the party that’s spent so much time, energy, and political capital in using it as a bludgeon.
Why didn’t he, you mean? There were no negative consequences left for him to suffer at that point, him being a private citizen with no remaining electoral prospects. Nor, for that matter, any respectable reason for anyone outside his family to care.
You imagined something, that’s for sure.
Are you seriously asking why hypocrisy is bad? Why claiming (implicitly) to be morally superior when the facts show otherwise is bad? Please.
Hookers. Illegal, remember?
Loss of popular support, but his sexuality was a useful cover story.
It was over before his affair came out.
Why the constant attempts at equivalency?
You know, these decisions are as much personal as political, but in your first two examples, there were issues that went beyond sex. Spitzer was accused of breaking the law, not just cheating on his wife, and McGreevey allegedly put his boyfriend (or whatever the male equivalent for the word “mistress” would be) into a public job that he wasn’t qualified for.
I wouldn’t be so sure that Edwards’ career is over, but he was only a private citizen, with no elected office and no current candidacy for any when his affair got exposed anyway, so there was no possibility for any party consequence.
I think the treatment of Edwards by the right wing media was actually pretty disgusting. They were hounding a private citizen about his sex life. There was no public interest being served in reporting on that.
Give it your best shot, bucko. I can see the bad arguments coming already. Gonna do Al Gore and his house again? Yawn.
He’s got “Bush lied us into a war, Obama lied about maybe not always being able to keep your doctor, so they’re just the same” going on already over in GD. Ain’t false equivalency grand?
To follow up on what Captain Carrot said, nobody is saying Dems who cheat on their spouses deserve any sort of gold star. They’re being jerks. Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer, whoever.
But their cheating doesn’t make them bad Democrats, just scummy people, nor does it undermine the credibility of Democratic policies. Their cheating doesn’t run contrary to the principles they’ve espoused and fought for as Democrats. Neither has anything to do with the other.
I hear Obama forgot to tell people that if their doctor died, they wouldn’t be able to keep the same doctor. One can only call that omission a damned lie!
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll stop responding to his questions in this thread now. Saves me a lot of time if I know the person in question isn’t really interested in discussion in good faith.