Which Political Party Has Better Sex Scandals?

Michael Kinsley: “My own, unscientific—and, in fact, brazenly biased—sense is that Republicans get tangled in the web of conventional morality more often than Democrats. I haven’t even mentioned all the right-wing family-values preachers with wide stances on the Appalachian Trail in recent years. Or some of the men who were so vociferous in their condemnation of Bill Clinton—such as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who at the time was conducting an extramarital affair with a woman on the Hill, later to become his third wife, and Senator David Vitter, whose phone number was found in the records of the fabled ‘D.C. Madam,’ Deborah Jeane Palfrey, and who admitted that he had sinned. Or the current governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, a former church deacon and Sunday-school teacher who (thanks to what the press calls ‘lusty audiotapes’) is believed to have had an affair with his married top aide (a charge they both deny), and who now faces impeachment. Or the raft of potboilers by Republican writers—from Newt Gingrich (‘Suddenly the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress’) and Lynne Cheney to Scooter Libby and Bill O’Reilly—that could themselves be turned into lusty audiotapes.”

“Could it be that these conservatives are fighting an inner battle on the public stage? Or is that too simplistic? Perhaps conservatives are just sexier than liberals and can’t stop themselves from misbehaving. Or maybe it’s the other way around: it’s not that conservatives tend to be pervs (as Donald Trump charmingly called Anthony Weiner) but that pervs tend to be conservative. Or maybe a belief in free markets leads to a belief in free love. All that talk about the “invisible hand” can give a guy ideas—and make him think he’ll never get caught.“