Hypocritical Leaders Should Not Sink Social Conservatism

On June 25 I wrote a piece on New Majority- you can see it here. Below is what I wrote originally, before it was edited for space and content:

By now, everyone knows South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has admitted to an affair in South America. Within hours of his admitting to the affair the frontrunner Republican to replace him has taken his picture down from her campaign website and conspiracy theories about what REALLY happened in Argentina appeared on a blog. Sanford has also resigned as the head of the Republican Governor?s Association.

After Sanford admitted to the affair, one of my co-workers mentioned he thought the Republican Party should perhaps give up its mantle as the party of family values- not a bad opinion, given what happened with Nevada Senator John Ensign and former Congressional members Mark Foley, Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig and other Republicans who have had sordid and underhanded parts of their personal life come to light in recent years. However, as Dinesh D?Souza put it in Letters to a Young Conservative- to paraphrase- Republicans accept that people aren?t perfect, and that even those who proclaim family values will fail (the reference, written in 2002, compares former President Clinton to then- Majority Leader Gingrich), but that the movement should not follow the failures of the imperfect beings who are family values proponents. Instead, the fight must continue through its supporters’ failures.

The question remains for the Republican Party, however, as to whether or not social values should even BE a leading issue, especially with such prominent leadership failures. What does it mean for the party? Personally, I think that while that question is relevant, it’s more important to find reasons to keep up the good fight- it’s easy to forget WHY these flawed and immoral people supported family and social value policies in the first place (besides, of course, to win elections).

I think there are three reasons rank-and-file Republicans should not give up the fight, both on a grassroots and national level- first, there are definitive links between family and economic success that should be put in the public eye; secondly, all political “values” are hypocritical at the leadership level, so why target the social values; and lastly, there are undeniable societal and cultural benefits of upholding conservative social values.

Regarding the links between family values and economic success and security, Robert Patterson defended the idea of social values as a leading fight for Republicans on June 3- he says the Republican leadership must “fully [recognize] the interplay between the economic and social conservatism that the party claims to represent, and holding up what [David] Goldman terms ?impoverished demography? as the key domestic concern of the 21st century.” Included in Patterson’s analysis are the fact that in the first part of the last century “American families were vibrant and strong, which helped hold the welfare state in check” (something that is missing today, with our massive divorce and illegitimacy rates), and instituting a variety of Social Security, Medicare and other tax breaks for families in the nearby future. He also believes we should look to Teddy Roosevelt- apparently he was quite the family man, and considered it his topmost priority even as president.

Secondly, one only has to look at the D.C. school voucher issue to understand the far-reaching hypocrisies of the Democratic Party. See my piece here from several weeks ago, where I talked about how the school voucher system in our nation’s capital took 1,700 children and put them into a voucher system that has them almost a full half-grade ahead of their equivalent peers in the normal D.C. public school system for half the cost to the taxpayer, less than half a decade into the program. Yet, for some reason, President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan- the former who claimed on the campaign trail he would support what worked for education- are allowing Democrats to kill the plan once the current crop of students graduate. Considering that Wall Street Journal, The Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute are fully in support of the voucher program for its success, one would think the Democrats (who claim they support the poor, minorities and children) would jump on the chance to help these kids. Apparently, though, unions and government control of schools is more important. Of course, there is simply NO questioning that Democrats care about poor minority children- isn’t that why most of the media hasn’t jumped on this hypocrisy, even though it will take literally thousands of students in the nation’s worst education district and put them on the economic, educational and cultural path to success?

Generally, I would avoid the prior paragraph in arguing for supporting Republican social and family value policies- tit-for-tat is not a wholly productive or wide-ranging way to win elections, appear above the fray of petty politics or prove solid leadership. However, since the Democratic hypocrisies have much larger effects on the general populace (see Charles Krauthammer’s piece on drilling policies in the United States last August) than a simple, immoral affair, I think they are worth pointing out.

Beyond the political, however, are the simple facts of upholding socially conservative values and their unquestioned benefit for society. As Patterson pointed out, strong families help the economy. Furthermore, Concerned Women For America points out that teenagers are happier when abstaining from sex before marriage and women are less depressed when following the same habit. Numerous studies also show that Natural Family Planning methods of sexual activity lead to a less than 5% divorce rate as opposed to the 50% average rate in America.

Unfortunately, the rest of us are flawed, too- we may not be having affairs but we are judging these politicians, shallowly looking at the social conservative movement through THEM as opposed to through the people it truly affects on a grassroots and local level and getting wrapped up in the “reality show” that is the 24-hour news cycle. For those who really believe in the family values movement, we must convince the rest of America through constant, unceasing examples of upstanding moral behavior, forgiveness for those who fall short, and the ready reminders that it IS the conservative social movement that will help keep America great, not the low moral standards of the Democratic Party. As someone at my college explained a few years ago, Democrats aren’t shocked at the behavior of other Democrats because of the party’s own low moral standards- is this really who we want leading the social value fight in America? A failed high standard is certainly better than a successful low moral standard.

- dustin