Yet another reason why I remain an Independent

Jonah Goldberg's column in the LA Times today really struck a cord with me. Foley Flap Highlights Dems' Hypocrisy

Self-described progressives are great at whipping up a moral frenzy when it serves their purposes, and hilariously indignant when Moral Majority types return fire in kind. Remember the national bout of St. Vitus' dance over sexual harassment in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Liberals made sexual harassment their signature issue, rending their clothes and gnashing their teeth over Sens. John Tower and Bob Packwood and Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, among others. The puritanical zeal of these inquisitions cannot be exaggerated.

And then came Bill Clinton, who was, by any fair measure, a worse womanizer than Thomas or the rest of them. The Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit led, inexorably, to revelations of alleged rape and scandalous behavior with an intern. Forced to choose between power and principle, liberals and feminists held an impromptu fire sale on principles.

Like Goldberg, I am of the opinion that the Republicans losing control of Congress in November would be a good thing. But I'm not naive. And as bad as my memory is at times, I still remember the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal well.

I remember the "it's just about sex" mantra very well. Of course the facts of the case and the legal points of the Impeachment were about vastly more than just the admitedly lurid sexual context. But that didn't stop Democrats from trying their damndest to spin the story away from the legal issues and trying to make Republicans look like sexual Puritans obsessed with the president's sex life.

The simple fact of the matter was that exposing the marital infidelity of folks like Representatives Henry Hyde and Newt Gingrich, while entertaining and certainly revealing of a certain moral hypocrisy on the part of Clinton's GOP pursuers, had zero bearing on the legal issues. Legal issues which I might add Clinton was censored by the Arkansas Bar Association for after he ended his terms in office.

Yep. The House Republicans are knee deep in a cesspool of their own making and absolutely deserving of whatever judgement voters mete out this November. But that doesn't make their Democratic critics cesspool-free by any stretch of the imagination.