Hiltzik: Democrats really feel disgrace, Republicans experience it

There isn’t a lot good to return out of the most recent scandal in Los Angeles politics, which includes a recording of a racist dialog amongst Latino political leaders.

The fallout does level to a captivating distinction in current occasions between how the Democratic and Republican political worlds have responded to scandal of their ranks.

To place it succinctly, when scandal strikes amongst Democrats, resignations pile up. When scandal strikes Republicans, the GOP treats it as a badge of honor.

In L.A., former Metropolis Council President Nury Martinez, heard on the leaked tape making racist remarks about Black folks and Oaxacans in addition to crude remarks about Jewish folks and Armenians, has resigned her council seat.

Ron Herrera, one other participant within the dialog, has stepped down as president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Two different contributors within the dialog, Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, haven’t resigned as of this writing.

However the clamor for his or her departure has swept by way of Democratic Celebration ranks; they’ve reached as excessive as President Biden, who has known as for them to step down. They might attempt to stave off calls for that they stop, however at this second their political futures are dim certainly.

Distinction that with the response inside the GOP to, say, the revelations about Herschel Walker, the social gathering’s candidate for the U.S. Senate from Georgia. Proof reveals that Walker, who has paraded round as an antiabortion candidate in consonance with the social gathering’s draconian antiabortion place, paid for a lady’s abortion in 2009.

Walker doesn’t deny that he paid the girl, solely that the cash was for an abortion. However regardless that the proof is robust, Republicans haven’t allowed it to shake their assist for the candidate even one little bit.

“I feel we’re going to stay with Walker,” Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), instructed CNN on Tuesday, a sentiment echoed by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who introduced plans to marketing campaign for Walker even after the scandal broke.

Democrats so typically and so quickly pull the set off on their accused wrongdoers that they’ve generally been criticized for transferring too swiftly. One instance is the case of former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), an efficient politician who was compelled to resign in 2018 within the wake of accusations of sexual misconduct, some courting from his stint as a author and forged member of “Saturday Night time Stay” for greater than a decade.

However questions have at all times swirled in regards to the accusations, and quite a few political leaders who joined the refrain calling for Franken’s resignation have since expressed remorse that he wasn’t afforded the chance to deal with the costs earlier than the Senate Ethics Committee.

Donald Trump was credibly accused throughout his first presidential marketing campaign of sexual assault — certainly, in a infamous recording he even boasted about a few of his habits. The disclosure of the tape appeared more likely to derail his marketing campaign, but it surely wasn’t lengthy earlier than “the spin started,” as Lili Loofbourow of Slate put it in 2020. “An occasion that everybody on the time noticed as manifestly disqualifying received repackaged as no large deal, and in addition someway ‘faux information.’”

Republicans haven’t at all times turned a blind eye to scandal of their midst. Dwight Eisenhower’s White Home chief of employees, Sherman Adams, was compelled to resign when he was discovered to have accepted an costly vicuña coat and different presents from a businessman below federal investigation. However that was in 1958. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and Home Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Unwell.) misplaced their jobs for sexual misconduct, in 2006 and 2007 respectively.

None of this essentially signifies that Republicans are extra scandal-prone than Democrats. My colleagues David Zahniser, Julia Wick, Dakota Smith and Benjamin Oreskes known as the roll of Democratic indictments on Wednesday: Final yr, they reported, Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was indicted on bribery and conspiracy fees. He was suspended by his colleagues.

Earlier, Councilmember Jose Huizar was charged with racketeering, bribery and fraud. He was suspended six months earlier than resigning. Each have pleaded not responsible.

Nor does it imply that there aren’t any circumstances of Democrats hanging agency within the face of disgrace or Republicans stepping down below a cloud.

Former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, refused to resign after a photograph surfaced from his medical faculty yearbook exhibiting him both in blackface or Ku Klux Klan robes. (It was by no means sure which of the 2 figures within the picture was him.) He served out his time period, which ended this yr.

However the distinction between Democratic and Republican responses to scandal is obvious at present. That could be traceable to the divergence in expectations among the many Democratic and Republican bases.

Democrats anticipate their politicians to at the very least attempt to uphold civic and ethical values. When their leaders fall wanting that ultimate, they react with anger and disgrace. That’s true even when the implications might result in defeat on the polls or the lack of a political chief whose effectiveness — however his or her shame — is indeniable.

Within the sedulous pursuit of energy in any respect prices, alternatively, Republicans are keen to miss disgraceful habits. It’s a brief step from overlooking scandal to celebrating it.

The Republican behavior of standing agency within the face of scandal might be traced to Richard Nixon and his well-known “Checkers” speech of Sept. 23, 1952, when he took to the nationwide TV airwaves to defend himself dwell towards fees of misusing a political slush fund.

Within the view of former Nixon speechwriter Lee Huebner, the speech presaged the Republican and conservative observe of “emphasizing appeals to social and cultural ‘identification’ fairly than financial pursuits” to enchantment to voters.

Nixon, whose place as vice chairman on the Eisenhower ticket hung within the steadiness, spoke abjectly of the monetary pressures he and his spouse, Pat, confronted: “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat,” he instructed an enormous TV viewers. “However she does have a decent Republican fabric coat, and I at all times inform her she would look good in something.”

The defining line within the speech was his reference to a cocker spaniel pet named Checkers that he admitted receiving as a present. “The youngsters, like all youngsters, cherished the canine,” he stated, including that whatever the criticism, “we’re going to maintain it.”

It stays a Republican and conservative behavior to defend a few of the most malodorous habits at present.

After the egregious Alex Jones was hit with an almost $1-billion judgment Wednesday for relentlessly purveying the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook bloodbath, during which 20 kids and 6 adults had been murdered, was a faux, his trigger was taken up by Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who tweeted that he was the sufferer of “political persecution.”

“It doesn’t matter what you consider Alex Jones all he did was communicate phrases,” she tweeted. “He was not the one who pulled the set off. … That’s what freedom of speech is. Freedom to talk phrases.”

One wonders how far this fashion of argument would get if not for the connivance of the political press. We’re not solely speaking about Fox Information, however the mainstream press that feels the urge to seek out “steadiness” in each report of wrongdoing, a discreditable observe often known as “bothsidesism.”

This week, for example, NBC Information paired the Herschel Walker revelations with a report that John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, required a transcription monitor throughout a information interview due to the residual results of a current stroke.

“Fetterman, Walker face political challenges exterior of the general atmosphere,” NBC headlined an internet report, as if an antiabortion candidate’s financing of an abortion was someway equal to the problem of recovering from a stroke.

Bothsidesism solely goes to this point, apparently. NBC famous that Fetterman’s marketing campaign has “denied requests for his medical data,” however didn’t point out how carefully guarded Trump’s medical situation was when he got here down with a COVID an infection throughout his presidential time period.