Saved from Hypocrisy

The best thing about the impeachment fiasco is the failure of the Republicans to tempt the public into hypocrisy. The electorate refused to treat lying about one’s sex life as a big deal. This is a great boon for the faction within the Republican Party that appeals to selfishness rather than prurient self-righteousness. With any luck, the leaders of that Party will now decide that they will get little mileage out of stepping up their gay-bashing, anti-abortion, and “family values” campaigns. So the greedheads may dictate future Republican strategy. The hypocrites of the Christian Right (sometimes known as “cultural conservatives”) may be forced back into the shadows.

This is, of course, not an unmitigated blessing. The greedhead Republicans may, the next time they manage to elect both a president and a congressional majority, finish repealing the New Deal. They may get enough tax cuts through Congress to make social programs impossible, and then proceed to “privatize” Social Security. They are quite capable of arranging things so that still more of the nation’s wealth is diverted to the suburbs, and of duping the taxpayers into sending their Social Security money to stockbrokers rather than to the Treasury Department.

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