Republican Perfection Police
In defending his client from the latest smear-by-whisper in the ’08 campaign, John McCain’s lawyer says he “was the victim of false, vicious rumors about his personal life” during the 2000 South Carolina primary, and that “rumors and gossip damaged his campaign and may have cost him the election.”
So the spirit of Karl Rove lives on in whatever dirt is at the bottom of Matt Drudge’s “revelations” about a story McCain’s people have tried to persuade the New York Times not to publish.
In the Republican moral universe, human frailty is a disqualification for President, so the last two candidates standing are Mike Huckabee, the man of God, and Mitt Romney, he of the unblemished personal life.
For a while, his 9/11 aura kept Rudy Giuliani afloat, but the weight of personal imperfections finally dragged him down in the polls, and Fred Thompson has not shown enough orthodox Republican zeal to make up for his actor-ish womanizing and trophy wife,
In their neo-Victorian fervor, the GOP gave us the exemplary personal life of George W. Bush as an antidote to Bill Clinton’s waywardness, and now it seems that nothing less will do for ’08.
As the protagonist of Jean Anouilh’s “Waltz of the Toreadors” observed about the original Victorians, propriety demanded that couples be seen serenely swimming through life side by side and, if there was a need to relieve oneself, it had to be done under the water, out of sight.
Today’s Republicans are keeping that ethos alive with a vengeance.
Cross-posted from my blog.
6 Responses to “Republican Perfection Police”
Not only are you being neurotic about standards of conduct (for whatever “reason” — it doesn’t matter at all), you miss the obvious, which is that even some of the Religious Right leadership is willing to sell its soul and support someone with disgusting domestic behavior and someone who is not only exploiting 9-11 for celebrity-political advancement, but is using the tragedy to enrich himself unethically, in order to keep Hillary Clinton (who remains repellent to better people 15 years later) from getting into the White House a second time.
Meanwhile, we know where the real-world examples can be found of people relieving themselves underwater (and above water).
I’m well aware of this behavior not only at notorious Party Cove at Lake of the Ozarks, but here in Iowa.
Interesting hypothesis, but the current president disproves this; he of the partying, alcohol and potential drug use.
I think human frailty is probably fine for most republicans and democrats: It just has to be the right kind of failing.
1. No, real drug use he refuses to admit.
2. Bush in office doesn’t disprove some R.R. people getting behind Giuliani (whom I don’t like, as you can tell) on anti-Clinton grounds alone. In fact, it may have been true with Bush as well, their trying to keep Gore out of the White House. Though Bush is reformed now (so it is believed) and isn’t failing in his past ways.
Though Bush is reformed now
That of course, is the key to beating that sort of charge. Well, inasmuch as people sincerely believe it anyways.
I do think it’s OK not to like Guli on personal grounds. I know some level of jerkishness needs to be present for the world’s most powerful human, but inasmuch as his personal life reflects this prexisting assumption, I feel free to judge whether I want him as the man representing me.
Quite honestly, I think that even if Bush was partying in office, we’d never hear about it. He has picked the people that surround him by loyalty-knowing they will never go on Good Morning America and dish about his bad habits if he regressed.
Bush brought at trusted inner circle with him from Texas for a good reason. He knew people like Rove , Condi Andy Card and Harriet Miers would protect him from the vultures in Washington that would capitalize on the slightest weakness.