When Principles Are a Club, Instead of Principles

In contemplating the mess that is Virginia politics, it is perhaps most instructive to see how the calls for Governor Ralph Northam to resign have subsided as it became possible that the result of his resignation wouldn’t be just another Democrat as governor but a Republican.¹  In the meantime, at least from this distance, Virginia Republicans appear to be keeping fairly quiet because (i) they are checking their own yearbooks, (ii) they realize that, when the other side is shooting themselves in the foot, the best thing is to get out of the way, or (iii) they remember what the Senate Democrats did to Brett Kavanaugh and they aren’t going to do the same (probably the least likely alternative).

In any case, maybe a few people are beginning to realize that we should pick our principles based on what is right and fair as opposed to either what we can beat the other side on the head with or what we have to do to protect our own people.  In this regard, consider the following from Megan McArdle on what can happen when you care more about protecting your own side:

“Just when feminists were making serious inroads against sexual harassment, Democrats started pretending that it somehow wasn’t an appalling abuse of power for the most powerful man in the world to use an intern for sexual gratification.²  It’s nauseating to contemplate what the women in my generation were forced to endure while waiting for the Clintons to leave public life so that feminists could reclaim their principles from lost-and-found.”

I have wondered if it is just a coincidence that the #MeToo movement took off once Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election and Democrats no longer had to worry about protecting her (and themselves) from claims about what Bill Clinton may or may have done.³

If you are old enough (and I am), you can remember when Phyllis Schlafly was the leading opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment.  In fact, a good case can be made that it was Mrs. Schlafly who stopped the ERA from being adopted in the late 1970s and early 1980s.⁴  But it wasn’t Phyllis Schlafly or the lack of an ERA that stopped progress on sexual harassment.  It was people who decided that protecting their own side was the most important thing.
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¹ One wonders if Al Franken might still be a senator if the governor of Minnesota at the time had been a Republican.
² Not to mention the claims of Juanita Broaddrick and others that were dismissed and ignored.
³ Also, it seemed pretty obvious during the 2016 campaign that former Secretary Clinton really couldn’t go after Donald Trump for his treatment of women because her husband, and former Secretary Clinton’s defense of him, was always in the background.
⁴ My only Phyllis Schlafly story: Seven or eight years ago, my wife and I were at a Federalist Society Convention in Washington.  It was, as usual, full of young people (especially compared to us).  As we were waiting in line to go into the room for one of the speeches, I saw Phyllis Schlafly walk by.  She was walking to the end of the line, which was much farther back.  I’m not sure anybody else recognized her, other than my wife, of course.  We stopped her and asked her if she wanted to join us in line, which she did.  Which was pretty neat because I got to tell her I had not only read A Choice Not an Echo but also Strike from Space.  I think she was surprised about the latter.