I knew Sen. Ensign was a hypocrite, but it wasn’t until I was got through this exhaustive list at Benen’s joint that I realized how much of a hypocrite he is:
When Bill Clinton’s adultery came to public light, Ensign not only voted to remove the president from office, but insisted the president should resign as a result of the personal scandal. When former Sen. Larry Craig was caught up in a sex scandal, Ensign not only called for Craig’s ouster, but led the charge against him.
Ensign has also been a fierce opponent of marriage equality, and supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In 2004, the Nevada Republican lectured his colleagues, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.”
And did I mention that Ensign is a longtime member of the Promise Keepers, a conservative evangelical group that promotes strong families and marriages?
Despite all that, you know what? I don’t want him to resign. And I don’t think he should be pressured by the Republicans to resign. Whether or not he has any future political life is up the voters of his state, but he shouldn’t be hounded out of office because of an affair. No one should.
And that is why he is such a hypocritical jerk.
gbear
I’m sure he’ll agree with yo…
Oops. You just lost him.
Augustine
Plus, all the superfun media attention would end, too. Also.
Comrade Stuck
I’m curious as to how? I haven’t been able to access the Washington Monthly site since last night.
gnomedad
6 posts and counting for Ferris Cole’s day off.
BDeevDad
Nevada politics are messed up. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas when you have an affair with an employee whose husband and son also work for you.
Evidently, the Republican Governor has been kicked out of the Governor’s Mansion by his wife for having an affair as well.
Joshua Norton
“Family values” like religion is something the right wingers impose rather than accept.
Comrade Stuck
Oh! it’s cached. Nevermind.
Garrigus Carraig
If he were to resign, it could be seen as adherence to stated principles as much as a result of being hounded. If he were at all principled, he would resign.
.
What I want is the easiest road to a decent Dem taking that seat, whatever that may be. If there are no decent Dem pols in that state, then the War Party can have it.
ricky
.
No, he should be hounded out of office for having an affair with an employee and hiring his mistressess spouse.
Think about that for a minute. If you owned a business and one of your top employees was cheating on his wife with one subordinate he used his discretion to hire, and it turned out his girlfriends spouse was also on the payroll through his actions, would you not fire him in a NY second? I would.
UInless, of course, he had the goods on me.
ricky
Ed Rooney has already committed suicide.
asiangrrlMN
Agreed. Fucking hypocrite (literally). Should not resign. I don’t really give a fuck whom politicians fuck–as long as the fuckee is over age and it’s consensual.
P.S. Washington Monthly is back up. At least, it was for me.
P.P.S. I gotta agree with ricky, though, as far as the employee thing. That’s never good.
Shade Tail
@Comrade Stuck:
If you can’t visit it now, then something is wrong on your end. His site is back up.
Comrade Stuck
@Shade Tail:
I have it now.
Punchy
Dont worry, cuz they wont. In today’s political climate, any open Senate seat has a better than 50/50 chance to go blue. 61 Dems could then tell lieberman to eat poison and get back some dignity.
Comrade Darkness
The Lady doth protest too much aint just idle chatter.
Garrigus Carraig
/Edit fail. Nevermind.
snds4x4
Being from Nevada, I would like to say that ‘we’ dodged another bullet. He is one of those good looking, smooth talking salesman types of politicians. And I mean used car type of salesman. He is all about protecting his own and the hell with everyone else.
He could have been a real contender for the 2012 precedential race.
As it is, he will probably now just be able to make governor of Nevada, since we always seem to vote in the most incompetent politician available.
peter
@ricky:
Well, it turns out that’s girlfriend’s husband, not wife. You’re just piling on the hypocrisy needlessly… :)
Zombie Ronnie
Yeah, but Ensign has apologized, patched up his life and moved on to be an even better Republican. Larry Craig is still a closet homo and Bill Clinton is still a Democrat. I hope you can see the difference.
liberal
Wha? He should be hounded out of office—because of his disgusting hypocrisy.
Mike
Some interesting details from one of our local
snarkmeisters…
http://www.lasvegasgleaner.com/
Calouste
Still quite a few murky details in the Ensign story:
1) Why did he hire this woman as a campaign staffer in December 2006, a month after the elections, with no elections due for another six years?
2) Why did both the woman and her husband leave Ensign’s employment in May 2008, even though the affair carried on until August?
Anne Laurie
Ensign’s next campaign can use the slogan “Hypocrisy — it’s the FOREMOST Republican Family Value!”
Zifnab
I still don’t understand this mentality. If Senator Ensign was Senator Generic Republican With Ambivalent Voting History, I’d be with you. Getting caught in a sex scandal really doesn’t have anything to do with your political career.
That said, if a Senator builds his career on a certain set of political beliefs and proceeds to enshrine those beliefs in law, and then decides to start breaking said beliefs – beliefs he uses as a rational for tyrannizing others – then I think it’s time for him to go. Once you’ve crossed that, “For me but not for thee” threshold, your usefulness as a lawmaker has come to an end. You’re not passing laws that you have any interest in following.
I’m sure that could be said of a lot of Senators, but in cases like this its particularly glaring. If Ensign was an avid vegetarian and repeatedly pressed for an end to the meat industry, and someone caught him at a BBQ with a pork chop in each hand and a face covered in sauce, I’d feel the same way.
ricky
Simple rule, folks. You don’t get to bang the help.
If you own a business and start diddling one employee who is married to another employee you will go out of business.
If you don’t own the business and engage in the same conduct you get fired.
jake 4 that 1
Wonkette brought the mockery because Ensign was (still is?) separated from his wife at the time and was only having it off with an adult human female. Compared to his fellow GOPers that’s Booooriiiing.
Yeah, this is one of many reasons why I assume anyone who storms around screaming about family values is projecting harder than the little girl in the Exorcist.
Get thee behind me GOP hypocrites. Or rather, don’t. And keep your hands where I can see them.
freelancer
Republican Stupidity, April Fools Day Part II:
via Benen, via Roll Call:
BWAAAAAHAHAHA!
Crashman06
How do these people get away with this sort of cognitive dissonance? Granted, I’m not privy to his internal thoughts, so maybe this has been tearing him up inside for a long time, but maybe not.
Do you think someone like this actually realizes how hypocritical he or she is being? Can anyone protectively rationalize like this to such an extreme degree?
What is wrong with people like this?
ricky
@ Peter
First, it is not the hypocrisy, it is the sexual misuse of the employer-employee relationship. Second, he had botrh of them on different payrolls he controlled at one time or another. Third, I’m not piling on, I edited it before you got your comment in. That said, if he was screwing a woman and she did have a wife and he did put the wife on the payroll too, I’d give him a medal for chutzpah.
VictorLaszlo
gbear@1, that was my lol of the day. Thanks.
BruinKid
@jake 4 that 1:
My God, the nominees for Comment of the Year just keep on coming today.
ferd
If we can no longer blackmail a politician for adultery, how on earth will we keep this democracy thing under control?
jake 4 that 1
@freelancer: Four pages? FOUR?
Folks, if you haven’t seen it, the Dem bill is 615 pages. Is a lot of that fluff? Maybe, but you ain’t gonna create a national health care system in FOUR FRICKIN’ PAGES.
Four.
The bubble budget was at least 10, if memory serves.
gbear
Well, that would have been a first.
sponson
I agree, politicians, even hypocritical ones, should not resign over extramarital affairs, with the possible exception of a future revelation that he actually paid blackmail. Absent that, all of it is none of our business.
freelancer
One of Benen’s commenters nails it for being too verbose:
And the graphics, man. Don’t forget the graphics.
Adam Collyer
@Zifnab:
This.
It’s not about the affair. It’s about the sham of a representative he is, and holding himself out to be something other than what he actually is in order to gain the people’s votes.
As a New Yorker, it’s one of the reasons why I certainly wasn’t upset when Gov. Spitzer resigned, nor was I calling it a “right-wing hit job.” It may have been. I can’t say for sure. However, Spitzer built his entire political career out of busting politicians and claiming the mantle of “the bright and shiny guy who’s going to clean up the state.” That’s all well and good, until you, as Governor, abuse the trust of the people and are completely compromised in your public persona.
Of course, had I known what a disaster his successor would be, I can’t say I wouldn’t have given pause and really excused his behavior. One great line at the Democratic National Convention does not a governor make…….
dirk gently
ricky has it right. the hypocrisy is bad enough, and given that he essentially lied to his supporters (who voted for him at least partially on his promise to uphold the sanctity of marriage) one might call for his resignation based on that. but the fact that there was an employer/employee relationship, and that Arizona taxpayers paid for that, is far worse and could be worth impeachment. or at least a serious investigation on conflict of financial interest, sexual harassment, misuse of public funds, or a host of other possible issues.
Whispers
I think he should be pressured to resign. Not because of the affair, but because of the hypocrisy.
Call it selection pressure.
dirk gently
except that he gained office by misrepresentation. i’m sure many of the people who voted for him did so because of his sanctity of marriage campaigning. he lied to them to get their votes, and doesn’t deserve to keep them.
asiangrrlMN
@freelancer: Again, proving that sometimes, it’s just better not to say anything. Sheesh. Four pages? I can type up a twenty-five page proposal WITH numbers in about three hours.
hypusine
Since this is apparently the bar by which changes to the Constitution are measured, here’s an incomplete list of other historical institutions that predate our Constitution and should therefore be enshrined as amendments:
Indentured servitude
Inquisition tribunals and institutions
Forced sexual slavery (as depicted, e.g., in Deuteronomy 21:10-14)
Adolphus
What’s stopping him? Republicans have put up adulterers before. (cough McCain cough) Of course he could just get hounded out of office and then become a “statesman” at large like fellow adulterer Newt Gingrich and have the MSM hang on every word like it was god’s own farts.
I would rather leave this up to voters, too. But how come it is just Democratic philanderers like Hart and Spitzer who get the bums rush?
And Crashman: I think it is something to do with the fundamental attribution error on steroids. Basically people attribute other people’s sins to innate characteristics, but shrug off their own as circumstance. To Ensign, Clinton cheated on his wife because Clinton is of low moral character, but he cheated on his own wife because he was seduced/lonely/stressed/ etc. It’s not HIS fault, it was the situation, but Democrats are morally weak.
PhoenixRising
Let’s end this thread, we have a winner.
You don’t screw the hired help.
Cheat on your wife and lie about it, your business and her business. Use taxpayers as your Gold Card at the Players’ Club, that’s everyone’s business.
PhoenixRising
Let’s end this thread, we have a winner.
You don’t screw the hired help.
Cheat on your wife and lie about it, your business and her business. Use taxpayers as your Gold Card at the Players’ Club, that’s everyone’s business.
Tom
I completely agree.
And, just in general, I’m so sick of the default answer to any “scandal” — large or small — being that the person must resign: Janet Napolitano must resign because of the DHS right-wing report. Trent Lott must resign because of something he said at that dead guy’s birthday party. Craig must resign because he tried to blow a cop… or someone said something mildly offensive, so they must resign.
Whatever. Let the voters decide. New Rule: No one can call for a politician to resign unless they are charged with or found guilty of a crime or have displayed gross incompetence of some kind.
flounder
I think he should be hounded out, but he should be hounded out by voters that are pissed off at his particular brand of hate mongering and general lameness.
Tom
Also, only the pol’s constituents can call for them to resign. If you can’t vote for them, STFU.
BombIranForChrist
When pompous jesus-heads stop trying to cram their corrupt religion down my throat, I will stop holding them to their own standards.
BombIranForChrist
@Tom:
I would add “apologize” to this rule.
Is it just me, or have apologies jumped through the roof in the last couple years?
I detest the Bushies, but one thing I liked about them, perhaps the only thing, is they didn’t crawl out of their holes to apologize whenever any random idiot wagged a finger at them.
Jager
Geez, All these years and he is still an Ensign, I would have thought he’d been RIFed by now.
Left Coast Tom
@asiangrrlMN:
Yes, but then you’d be committed to a policy proposal. That’s not the Republican Way.
mclaren
It is amazing.
That he had an affair with a girl, I mean. GOP stands for “Gay Older Pedophile,” so it’s amazing that the person he had an affair with wasn’t an underage boy.
Progress, I guess.
Tsulagi
The really weird thing about this R-installment of their As the Family Values Turns soap opera is that it doesn’t involve diapers, widestanding tap dancing in restroom stalls, retarded impersonations of Austin Powers to underage boys as by Mark “Do I make you a little horny” Foley, soliciting an undercover cop to give him a BJ, gay hookers, wetsuits, or any of the other typical curves in their family values highway.
Straight affair with an adult woman? Epic fail for a Gooper.
Political Pragmatist
The best is the editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal–
There is no low to which they cannot sink below. Trust us.
LVRJ Editorial
Napoleon
@Joshua Norton:
. . . .and the rule of law.
dbrown
@sponson: Wrong – either you are ignorant of the facts or are choosing to ignore them. The woman he was f-ing was married. He f-ed her for nearly a year and both she and her husband had/were in his employ. First, anyone who knowingly f-s a married person is a total asswipe who does NOT have any right to pass laws making anything illegal for other people. I may be a left wing anarchist but I draw a very strong line at f-ing someone’s spouse. Next, he made a huge issue out of marriage and the morals issue of protecting it as law!
His position of power by being her boss makes the relationship even more immoral.
Incertus
Even the hypocrisy doesn’t bug me anymore–it’s like steroids in baseball now. Politicians labor under the assumption that they’re hypocrites until proven otherwise. But saying that it’s the worst mistake he’s ever made? Not even close. No one died because Ensign fucked around, but people died because he voted for an unnecessary war in Iraq.
Calouste
@Tsulagi:
Well, we don’t know what we don’t know yet. Maybe we just haven’t heard about the diapers yet.
For starters there is Ensign spreading rumors that he was his ex-mistress’ husband tried to blackmail him. (Btw, he better take that to the police before the husband in question has the opportunity to sue him for slander.)
Then apparently both husband and wife staffer quit Ensign’s employment in the same month (which would suggest that they moved somewhere else), yet the affair continued for a few more months.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@gnomedad: 6 posts and counting for Ferris Cole’s day off.
How can he stay away from the commentariat that loves him so? The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads — they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.
enplaned
He shouldn’t resign because of the sex.
He should resign if (as it appears) he paid off his paramour and her husband and her son with jobs at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign.
Having sex outside of marriage is a private matter. Misuse of public, company or party funds is not a private matter.
HyperIon
i’m thinking he will be resigning from that as well as his committee post. unless the organization has a Promise Breakers division (aka PK FAIL).
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
unless the organization has a Promise Breakers division (aka PK FAIL).
PK FAIL sounds like a psychic ability from an updated ‘net-savvy version of the video game Earthbound.
Just in case anyone else here is among that game’s small but ludicrously dedicated fan base.
BruceFromOhio
Underscoring why he should be hounded out of office. But we are discussing a Republican Senator. That bar is set pretty loooooooow.
Delia
The folks over at talkingpointsmemo think there’s more to the story than has yet come out, seeing as Ensign has done a lot to get both Hamptons and their son cushy jobs with good gooper connections and it still looks like he talked in order to get out of paying blackmail.
Darkrose
Oh yes he should.
I want his wife to leave him and his children to stop speaking to him. I want him to lose his job and his reputation and have his name dragged through the media mud for weeks. I want him to be completely and utterly miserable for the rest of his life
Why?
Because that’s what he wants for me. He wants to enshrine the principle that I am a second-class citizen who does not deserve to be happy spending the rest of my life with the person I love, because this adulterous lying sack of shit thinks that two chubby geeky dykes and their cats are a threat to the institution of marriage. I say that he’s a far bigger threat to said institution, and should receive what he gives in full and equal measure.
Is that bitter and vindictive of me? You betcha.
Comrade Stuck
@Delia:
Well, you know how the wingnuts loves their money. Anything but dat.
kommrade reproductive vigor
re: the Opinion letter. There must be a template somewhere.
The Democrats are worse? Check.
“None of yer business!”? Check.
At least he’s only controlled by his dick, not lawyers and unions? Check.
“Come on fellas, nobody’s perfect”?
Check.
And if you elected him because he wanted to install a camera in every bedroom to make sure only heterosexual couples bonded by holy matrimony were making vanilla whoopie … Sorry.
Left Coast Tom
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
I’d actually be a little surprised if Nevadans elected him for that reason. Brothels remain legal in much of the state (it’s county-by-county…there seemed to be quite a few brothels near US-50 just outside the eastern Carson City/County limits).
Boinking an employee married to another employee, if I understand this correctly, seems worse than patronizing one of the Local Establishments that were presumably available to him at some point while he tended to constituent business.
wilfred
There really was a time when being a hypocrite was about the worst thing short of violent that a person could be, back when ethics were something to live instead of talk about.
Hypocrisy is something to fear in oneself, something to fight against every moment. Tolerating it in public life cheapens the community as a whole.
maya
Just make him, and all other similar miscreants, wear a big scarlet A on their lapels when in Congress. It’s the Christian solution.
daveinboca
Actually, a better idea would for Ensign to wear a gigantic enormous letter E for his resemblance to John Edwards, and maybe a smaller e for Edward’s ridiculously cynical hypocritical wife Elizabeth, who is cashing in on a book.
Edwards, in his delusional narcissism, still believes he has a political career in front of himself, proving that he is a perfect “libtard,” with all the hypocritical self-centered autism that libtards suffer from, without being aware of their egregious solipsisms.
Ensign is nowhere near as retarded morally and crippled ethically as John & Elizabeth.
Mentis Fugit
It’s not the adultery he should resign for.
It’s not even the hypocrisy.
It’s the corruption.
Why has nobody used that word in this thread yet? Isn’t giving sinecures to your bit on the side and her husband actually a crime?
Chuck Butcher
@Zifnab:
No, no. I want him around as a breathing serving example so when another one of the American Taliban sticks their head up I can say, “Oh, so you’re another Ensign?”
Really, right there on display as a perfect example of what they really mean. Yeah, I’m mean, I want him to be regularly called out as the ‘Sanctity of Marriage Guy.’
To be clear, I want to be able to publicly fuck with the guy at many, many opportunities. I want to ram the red hot poker of his crap up his nose repeatedly.
mfwesq
Liberals have strict morals that they impose on themselves.
Conservatives have strict morals that they impose on others.
iLarynx
Yet another Republican showing his disdain for the US Constitution. Or course, these days simply being a member of the Republican Party displays ample disdain for the US Constitution.
Stonings, the divine right of kings, slavery, arranged marriages, virgin sacrifices and crucifixions also predate the Constitution. I guess that’s next up on the GOP platform.
Dave
@gbear@34:
Damn you, gbear – so much good tea wasted on a perfectly good keyboard…
@daveinboca@72:
dude…”rightard” works because of the similarity to the word “retard”.
Using “libtard” just proves the point of my previous sentence…
Brachiator
@Political Pragmatist:
Man, I just love that Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial:
Because, after all, Republicans are all mavericky, and such, and never suck up to corporate interests.
And of course, it is the current crop of Republitards who insist on making the supposed integrity of their public lives a litmus test for holding public office.