Ah, Republicans and Their "Moral High Ground..." :)

My father-in-law, who is even more liberal than I am, brought this New York Times article to my attention last night.

The article tells the story of a US Senator, David Vitter (R-Louisiana), who rose to great prominence amongst his constituents riding on his message of Family Values, the great Republican Holy Grail that has become their Chalice of Death.

Senator David Vitter has been known for efforts to plant himself on the moral high ground, challenging the ethics of other Louisiana politicians, decrying same-sex marriage and depicting himself as a clean-as-a-whistle champion of family values.

“I’m a conservative who opposes radically redefining marriage, the most important social institution in human history,” Mr. Vitter, a 46-year-old Republican, wrote in a letter last year to The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans daily.

Eh, yeah. Well, maybe not so much:

That self-created image, a political winner here since 1991, when Mr. Vitter joined the Louisiana House, took a tumble Monday with the disclosure that his phone number was among those on a list of client numbers kept by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam, who is accused of running a prostitution ring in Washington.

Mr. Vitter admitted Monday night to a “very serious sin in my past,” and talk radio and coffee shops here buzzed all day Tuesday with the front-page news, even as the senator remained out of sight.

Here's the funny thing:

Through it all, Mr. Vitter’s consistent themes have been family values, morality and ethics — his own, in contrast to what he has depicted as deficiencies in the local political culture. In Louisiana, where the well-documented infidelities of the onetime governor Edwin W. Edwards were all but a political asset, Mr. Vitter could easily survive any disclosure about adultery. Insincerity, however, is another matter.

“What makes this tougher for him is, one of his stronger campaign messages is a family-values message,” said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. “Whatever this is, it addresses the sorts of things he makes the centerpiece of his political message.”

Get the irony here? It's was OK to be unfaithful to your spouse. That's something Vitters could have gotten away with without much, if any, fallout. It's the insincerity thing that's probably going to knock down, permanently.

More irony: Vitters was supposed to be Rudy Giuliani's campaign manager in the South, where Giuliani's "Family Values" reputation is not all that good (as opposed to anywhere else in the country) and Vitters was supposed to be there to say, "I support Giuliani. So should you, because he's a great guy. And since I'm the Family Values guy and I support Giuliani for president, that means Giuliani will be just fine for family values..." Eh, yeah. Right.

Oh, yeah, one last irony here:

Five years ago Mr. Vitter was linked by a New Orleans weekly to a prostitute in the French Quarter, an association he angrily denied. But by then his position as a self-proclaimed scourge of lax ethics was well established.

Hmm. Maybe they should reopen re-examine that incident too, huh?

And these are the people so many frum people, especially those in the Chareidi/Yeshivish camp support and for whom they will vote?! OK, so democrats aren't anti gay marriage. In what possible way does that affect us, as frum Jews? On the other hand, Democrats want to fix the healthcare problem in the country (did you know this is the only first world country without Universal Healthcare for everyone? That's pretty embarrassing, don't you think?), they want to fix the economy (Clinton left office with a surplus; Bush will not be able to say the same, if he and Cheney actually give up office, that is...), and they want an end to a completely useless and illegal war.

Family Values. Yeah. Right.