GOP-style smearing on family matters doesn't work for us. At least, not very well

The GOP is free to engage in these smears primarily because their voter base is near-monolithic in their sense of moral superiority. Prima facie they have zero empathy for those who deviate from their strict and artificial moral standards. This despite the fact that they often fail to follow that standard themselves (and so do their leaders): they believe as a party that any -opponent- who does so is absolutely fair game for all sorts of attacks and smears.

It's not so simple with Democrats, because our voter base -can- empathize with those who deviate from the GOP's arbitrary moral standards. Take the Larry Craig incident--moral hypocrisy at its finest, no? Time to open up the smear gates? Yet the very smears that were flung so tastelessly around to damage Craig offended many Democrats: while the focus was ostensibly the hypocrisy of Craig's actions, the coarser jokes at the expense of his presumed sexuality, supposedly in service of highlighting his dishonesty, were ugly and offensive to many GLBT voters.

Palin is a similar case. Yes, by her own professed moral standards she would have done wrong to accept the VP nom given her freshly compounding responsibilities as a mother, and did wrong by failing to protect her daughter from the "horrors" of premarital sex. But Democratic voters will find the coarser attacks on this basis distasteful, as they empathize with both teen pregnancy and the unfairness of being forced to choose between motherhood and one's career.

In other words, one can't unite our base in derisive contempt of the morally "fallen" as one can unite the GOP's base. Teen pregnancy and public restroom same-sex solicitation -in general- are virulently despised by GOP voters as moral weakness and attract none of their sympathy. Those same behaviors, again in general, do not fill Democrats with any great contempt at all and they -do- attract our sympathy.

So what about the specific case? If an anti-gay GOP politician solicits gay sex in a restroom, the most ugly smears and jokes focusing on that behavior will offend many Democrats. If a Democratic politician solicits gay sex in a restroom, those same smears and jokes will serve only to unite Republicans in their derision. It's the same with Palin--those who are arguing "If Obama's young daughter were pregnant, they'd be slamming his and Michelle's ability as parents!" are correct. The reason is that their base will not at all disapprove of such smears, whereas ours will.

It goes without saying, I should think, that smearing Palin on this basis will have little impact on the GOP voters--where does David Vitter remain, for example? Larry Craig also survived his tumult, though he will not run for reelection. Such smears will have an impact, and not a uniting one, on our voters. It's true the facts of the case alone may serve to divide the GOP, and focus on hypocrisy is fine, but GOP-style morality smears just aren't very effective for us. Personally I'm glad that's the case.

Plus I like to race other threads to the page bottom.