Party of Moral Values

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes that while sex scandals are bi-partisan, the Republicans seem to be more prone to them recently.

That's not to say that some high profile Dems haven't been found Hiking the Appalachian Trail in recent years. John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer come immediately to mind. But there's just no denying that in the sex scandal derby Republicans are leaving Dems in the dust. Let's run through the recent list -- Foley, Craig, Vitter, Ensign, Sanford, Gibbons, Fossella, just to hit a few of the highlights. Who'm I missing?

In a similar vein, Charles M. Blow of The New York Times notes that red states lead blue states in rates of divorce, teenage pregnancy and on-line pornography subscriptions.

While conservatives fight to “defend” marriage from gays, they can’t keep theirs together. According to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract, states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006. Conservatives touted abstinence-only education, which was a flop, when real sex education was needed, most desperately in red states. According to 2006 data from the Guttmacher Institute, those red states accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest teenage birthrates.

And, a study titled “Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” that was conducted by Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor of business at Harvard Business School and published earlier this year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that subscriptions to online pornography sites were “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality” and in states where “more people agree that ‘I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage.’ ”

Ta-Nehesi Coates of The Atlantic makes the case that the problem with the GOP is not the Religious Right but its unreflective certitude in the face of either domestic or international opposition.

I keep wondering whether the GOP will recalibrate its relationship with the religious right. Cutting them off would be suicide. It also would be passing the buck. The problem is conservative sanctimony, and it's true that you see it in Newt Gingrich carrying the mantle for the traditional family. But you also see it in Lindsey Graham's pleas to the wages of whiteness. And you see it in a foreign policy that talks more than it listens.

The religious right isn't what's wrong with the GOP. It's the pervasive, unthinking, unreflective nationalism. It's the arrogance of thrice-divorced adulterers reaching for the banner of traditional families, and it's the arrogance of men who prosecuted a poorly planned war, on weak intelligence, presuming to lecture us on national security.

My biggest problem with movement conservatism is not in across-the-board disagreement with its policies. I am OK with disagreement. After all, our system of government was founded on debate and was constructed to protect and ensure it. However, the modern-day Radical Right sincerely believes that its political opponents are not only mistaken but morally defective. This escalates disagreement to holy war with humility and an appropriate sense of shame among the first casualties. Coates implies that this arrogance not only plays a role in bad policy but also in the sexual acting out of GOP politicians. I agree.

UPDATE: Conservative website New Majority notes that since 1990 sex scandals have occurred with roughly equal frequency on both sides of the aisle and therefore argues that the recent spate of scandals involving GOP figures doesn't mean much.

Even conceding that point, I think the fact that the GOP has used so-called "moral values" as a political weapon and represented itself as more moral than the Democrats does set scandals involving GOP figures apart. No one forced these Republican politicians to take such judgemental, self-righteous public positions while profiting politically from doing so. Now, having set a higher moral standard for themselves, they should suffer more severe political consequences for their moral failings. They can't have it both ways.

I am also struck by the weasel-like tone of that sort of argument from a group that promotes itself as the party of individual responsibility.

--Ballard Burgher