Forcing Larry Craig's resignation while embracing David Vitter

Can we at least dispense with the fiction that the Moral Values Senate caucus giving rousing applause to David Vitter is motivated by anything resembling actual principles when forcing Larry Craig to resign? - GG

Glenn Greenwald:

When Hugh Hewitt admitted that he wants Larry Craig to resign but does not want the adulterous, serial-prostitute-hiring David Vitter to do so, he was subjected to ridicule and scorn from many different corners -- on the ground that this inconsistency is obviously attributable both to anti-gay animus and rank political self-interest (Vitter's replacement would be chosen by a Democratic Governor, whereas Craig's would be chosen by a right-wing GOP Governor). Even some right-wing blogs noted the absurdity of that position: "Hugh Hewitt wants Craig to resign immediately but David Vitter to stay on. Huh?"

Yet that contradictory and nakedly unprincipled posture has now become the official position of the GOP leadership, led by its pious "moral values" wing. A whole slew of very upstanding Family Values Senators are parading around making a flamboyant showing of pressuring Larry Craig to resign (knowing that it will entail no political cost), all while remaining completely silent about David Vitter's at least equally "undignified" and confessed adultery and lawbreaking (acts which, just like Craig, he concealed from his family and colleagues in the Senate until he had no choice). …

Whatever else one wants to say about the "family values" wing of the right-wing movement, the absolute last thing that it is is a principled, apolitical movement. And – as the starkly different treatment for Craig and Vitter conclusively demonstrates – these vaunted "moral principles," for which we are all supposed to show such profound respect, are invoked only when there is no political cost to invoking them, and worse, typically only when there is political benefit in doing so.

Social conservative Ross Douthat, in a Bloggingheads TV session from yesterday, explained this important (though almost always overlooked) dynamic perfectly in the context of discussing Larry Craig:

The reason that gay rights became a political issue in a way that various other frankly more important issues having to do with marriage and family life did not – particularly issues about divorce and heterosexual divorce rates and single parenthood – is that, clearly, it is easier to demonize gay people. And it is much more of an electoral winner.

Obviously, I think the broader conservative concern about family values in American life is correct. I think the way it has manifested itself in our political life is that nobody wants to be the guy out there telling people – hey, you know, your heterosexual marriage or your out-of-wedlock children are the problem. It's much easier to say – here is this particular manifestation that you can easily set aside and say I'm not gay.

The only kind of "morality" that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations – from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage – are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.

They're all willing to cheer on the "rules of traditional marriage" which do not impose on them in any way (marriage must have a man and a woman – no problem there). But no "Family Values" politician could possibly survive politically by seeking to enshrine with the force of law all of the other equally important prongs of "Traditional Marriage" (all of that dreary, outdated "until death do us part" business which would deny the "right" for Values Voters to dump their wives and move on to the "next wife" when the mood strikes, or remain shacked up with their various girlfriends and the like).

It goes without saying that no gay candidate would stand a chance of receiving the presidential nomination from the party that stands for Traditional Marriage. And indeed, the Idaho Family Values Association (entitled to great respect), in the wake of the Craig scandal, just called -- explicitly -- for the Republican Party to purge all gay politicians from the party:

The Party, in the wake of the Mark Foley incident in particular, can no longer straddle the fence on the issue of homosexual behavior. Even setting Senator Craig's situation aside, the Party should regard participation in the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle as incompatible with public service on behalf of the GOP.

But they would never call for the exclusion from the Party of political figures who dumped their wives and are on their "second marriage" or "third marriage" -- actions at least equally deviant from principles of "traditional marriage" as anything Sen. Craig did and which wreck the lives of Our Children far more -- because so many of their pious supporters engage in the same behavior, as Idaho's traditionally high divorce rates (.pdf) demonstrate. Indeed, the highest divorce rates are found in the parts of the country where the so-called "Traditional Marriage" movement thrives most strongly, namely the Christian Values regions in the South. Hence, no "Christian, family values" politician could faithfully adhere to a political position of "traditional marriage" and "traditional values" because to do so would be to alienate and condemn a huge portion of the members of that movement.

It is this same self-interested, cost-free moralism that explains how it could be that, with the exception of Mitt Romney, all of the leading presidential candidates in the Party of Traditional Marriage have personal lives that reflect everything except for those values, with all their wrecked marriages and multiple wives and long adulterous records and various "step-children" and the like. And even more revealingly, the leading lights of the Traditional Values movement -- from Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to Bill O'Reilly -- have some of the most morally depraved lives of any public figures, making most Hollywood celebrities seem chaste by comparison.

But their moral depravity is of the heterosexual variety, and thus perfectly tolerable, because to condemn them or repudiate them would be to make huge numbers of the Values Voters faithful feel condemned as well. And no political moralizing is possible if its mandates require real sacrifice or restraint from its adherents. That is and always has been the great sham that defines the exploitation of moral issues for political gain. It does everything except apply its alleged principles consistently. … (More)