Jophiel wrote:
However, Gbaji plainly said "any of a number of things which would get any Republican thrown out" so he is welcome to list some of THOSE things since the rest of the list "obviously" doesn't count. I invite him to list, oh say, maybe three things that get "any Republican thrown out" but Democrats enjoy with impunity. Naturally, for these to hold weight you would expect an example of a Democrat and Republican both engaged in the action and the Republican getting the boot.
Um... let's see:
1.
Being Gay. Yes. This shouldn't be a scandalous thing, but when a Republican is gay, or might be gay, he's hounded by liberal media groups looking for even the slightest sign of impropriety and exaggerate and manipulate the facts to create a scandal (see: Mark Foley). Meanwhile Democrats like say Barney Frank can actually have sex with underaged interns and suffer no ill effects at all.
2.
Racist Behavior. Hard to find just one example of this. It's another one of those media perception issues. If a Republican says something that can even possibly be interpreted in a racial manner, it will be and it will become an outrage. And while the RNC will fight against cases where it's exaggeration and media spin going on, when there's a clear case of someone crossing the line (like Jim Allen, who you should be familiar with), he's asked to resign. Meanwhile, you have laundry list of Democrats who have said things as offensive or even moreso and have suffered no ill effect. Joe Biden (multiple times). Hillary Clinton. **** Harpootlian (his comments towards Haley were at least as offensive as those uttered by Allen. To be fair, he wasn't holding office at the time he said those comments, but the volume of crickets chirping from the media about this was pretty amazing).
The racism one alone could probably be its own topic of discussion. It's a massive double standard.
3.
Sexual Harassment/Affairs in the workplace. Speaking specifically of sexual activity directed towards a subordinate in the workplace. This is another with a laundry list of incidents. Now I can't say that every single Republican accused of such things have resigned (nor that no Dems have resigned), but a clear example of this would be say Sen Ensign, who resigned after having an affair with a campaign staffer. The contrast would be the big ol obvious case of Clinton having an affair with Monica Lewinski (and not resigning). Gary Condit is another example. And of course Filner's refusal to resign despite overwhelming evidence against him.
The pattern with regard to this one is that Democrats almost never resign unless they're actually convicted of a crime. And they are far less likely to receive pressure from within their own party to do so.
I'm sure you'll be able to find exceptions to these if you look hard enough. But I'm talking about a general trend that Democrats don't hold their own members to the same standards that they hold Republicans, while Republicans tend to hold both parties to the same standard. It's a combination of how the media covers (or doesn't cover) the story, to how the party response, to how the rank and file voters respond. It's a pattern that's hard to ignore.
Edited, Aug 20th 2013 2:47pm by gbaji