Conservative Hypocrisy
One thing that I wondered about when the Arnold Schwarzenegger controversy hit was whether or not conservatives would say and do all of the same things that liberals did when the poop hit the fan about former President Clinton: "That's just mud-slinging." "His character doesn't affect his job." "You're just being divisive." Sadly, based on little things I am seeing on some of the conservative web sites, that does seem to be what is happening.
But you can't criticize one and let the other go free, or vice versa. If one is going to argue that character does affect how one goes about serving in an office, then Arnold deserves the same questions and scrutiny that Clinton received. If one is going to say that the two are not related, then the dirt on Arnold should be ignored and Clinton should have been left alone.
Granted, there are some differences between Clinton and Arnold. Clinton did what he did while in office, and then perjured himself in court about it. Arnold did what he did over 25 years ago. So it is possible to argue that Arnold was a young idiot then, but has matured and become an older, wiser man, fully capable of standing at the helm of one of the largest economies in the world. I do not know if that is the case or not.
Still, from what little I have seen, that does not seem to be the case. It looks like conservatives, both the elite intelligentsia and the rank and file (at least as evidenced by foxnews.com opinion polls) are willing to "overlook" serious potential moral failings that they would have crucified Clinton for in order to advance the Republican party and add one more governorship to the list, one more "red" state.
September 1, 2003 10:25 PM