NEWS: "Family Values" At Work

Jun 17, 2009 10 Comments by

The Republican Party’s formerly unbeatable battle cry of “Family Values!” (loose translation: “the gays are coming!”) is taking a beating from within this week as Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., admitted to doing a rather dirty deed:

Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada Tuesday admitted an extramarital affair with a woman who had worked for him.

Ensign would not identify the woman, but said both she and her husband had been “close friends.” Her husband, he said, also worked for him.

“Last year I had an affair,” the senator told reporters outside his office in Las Vegas. “I violated the vows of marriage. It’s absolutely the worse thing I’ve done in my life.”

It’s always nice to know that our guardians of moral certitude in this vile, vile world are actually engaging in the same debauchery they openly disavow everyday on television. But hey, let’s be fair: he is from Las Vegas.

Maybe good, ol’ fashioned “family values” take on a new meaning in Sin City — or maybe they just call it hypocrisy.

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  • Jake

    Guardians of moral certitude? Are you kidding me? Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics across the board. It’s just sad to see that Republicans are following the example of their Democratic counterparts such as Eliot Spitzer, David Patterson and James McGreevey.

  • McKay

    Yeah, come on Steve. If you’re going to put on your political observer hat, at least pretend you’ve got more in mind than simply bashing the GOP. I’m pretty sure Republicans aren’t the only ones who have called for “family values” in an effort to score cheap political points; their definition of the cliched term is just clearer than that of the Democrats. Anyway, the point is, politicians are sometimes hypocrites. This is not really anything new, nor is it a very astute observation.

  • Steve Pierce

    While hypocrisy amongst politicians of both parties is definitely nothing new, that does not mean that the observation is not true. While politicians of all creeds pay at least some lip service to “family values” if pressed, it remains true that no group or party has flogged that horse longer, harder, and more self-righteously than the GOP. That was their main platform plank (and most successful vote-motivator) in Bush’s 2004 campaign. The vast majority of Bush voters told exit pollers that “values” determined their vote; not the economy, not national security, but “values.” So for John Ensign, someone who stood before Congress and extolled the virtues of marriage extensively in 1995, to come out and admit to desecrating that institution is noteworthy. And no, I would not demonize a Democrat in the same way. Not because it’s any less bad or because I like them more, but because they don’t run their whole campaigns on having the moral high ground in the “values” department. If you ask them, they’ll say “yeah, that’s great,” but it’s not a primary focus of their whole campaign. When that has been the GOP’s (and Sen. Ensign specifically) battle cry for the last 15 years, it is absolutely right to call them on the carpet – just as I would if Democrats were to start giving large, irresponsible tax cuts to the rich. If you campaign on something to that extent, you have to at least try to follow through and then be man enough to take the heat if you fail.

  • http://moroniwearsatie.blogspot.com Tony

    Definitely hypocritcal. This is why I am a moderate. There are still a few politicians out there that do understand what family values are, but he apparently is not one of them.

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