Have your lie and eat it too

I agree with Jesse, and with what Amanda actually said (not with what the usual cast of bad-faithers are babbling out, i.e. that Amanda's channeling of what the typical voter is going to think is somehow what Amanda thinks): A teenage mother is not the story. Policy is the story.

But I do just get this twinge. It's the same twinge I had about Dick Cheney's daughter, it's the same twinge I have anytime a Republican pleads "privacy": You don't get to, dammit! It's true, it's true: my political and moral opinion is that, short of criminal activity, sex should have no bearing whatsoever on a person's fitness for political office. I believe this strongly. I also believe that, short of criminal activity, sex should have no bearing on a person's anything. I believe this strongly, because I am a liberal.

And I believe that this is true for everyone, with no qualifications. Which is why it must be some unenlightened part of my brain that insists, from the peanut gallery, that it's NOT FUCKING FAIR that Republicans get to be the ones! The ones who pioneer things like a Vice Presidential candidate with a pregnant daughter? Are you kidding me? It's not fair. People on our side of the aisle have worked our asses off to improve stuff like this, and we're the ones that get crucified over it. Republicans get to have the pregnant daughter AND continue to condemn pregnant daughters, while Democrats (and liberal independents) are constrained by our principles to paste a smile on our face and give a thumbs up.

Now, obviously, this is unrestrained id stuff. What I really want is for social conservatives to check themselves ever and realize how incredibly right about this kind of thing social liberals are; how choice isn't just for the rich, how gay children aren't just for politicians, how hypocrisy is not, actually, a family value. But it won't happen. And so we'll continue to watch the right hammer us on one side for contributing to the fall of western civilization and on the other side for being judgemental about the very values we claim to maintain - and they'll sometimes be right on that latter, given some of the stuff that's been said by a few plants commenters at various sites - and, I don't know, content ourselves that at least we're right.

Because we are. Ideological consistency is the right thing to do. Always. But that doesn't mean that I don't get that twinge.