I feel badly for Mark Sanford. His e-mails seem to show genuine emotion, love, and internal conflict over a difficult situation in which many adults find themselves. Though I would never condone adultery, I believe it is a mistake to paint one-time offenders who enter into a second loving relationship with the same brush we use to paint womanizing repeat cheaters. I tend to think that although cheating is always a result of poor choices, much of the world exists in a vast gray area where outside objective judgments are difficult – if not impossible.
But that’s the particularly difficult corner the Republican Party has painted itself into. The number of people who benefit from its economic policies isn’t large enough to win elections. In its quest to build a coalition, it turned to “values” voters: people who see the world only in black and white. Voters like Tony Perkins, president of the warm-and-fuzzy-sounding Family Research Council, who declared in the New York Times today that Republicans are finally having a come-to-Jesus moment. “Are they going to be a party that attracts values voters, and are they going to be the party that lives by those values?” he asked.
Being the values party means living in black and white, and that isn’t sustainable. What we’re seeing now are the inevitable falls from grace of politicians – real people – who held themselves above the gray world of reality. The facade of moral perfection has a very short shelf life. It has begun to spoil, but Republicans are looking for the cause of the stench in all the wrong places.
Relying on voters who don’t live in a gray world has already cost the party voters who do. If they continue this strategy, the combined imperfection and intolerance of their candidates will cost them their existence. It may take a while, but I think we’re seeing the swan song of the Republican Party.
One Response
June 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Excellent points, all.
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