Hypocrisy among the Republican Party candidates is American as apple pie, argues Nick Green.

IMAGINE a scenario when the president of the United States has an affair and is impeached for lying about it. Next, imagine that the man leading the charge against him later admits to having an affair at the same time. Now, imagine that this twice divorced former Speaker of the House is running for the presidential nomination as the conservative anti-Washington family-values candidate, and might actually win. Finally, heave a deep sigh of relief that you’re 3000 miles away from this sad reality.

Newt Gingrich’s recent victory in the bellwether state of South Carolina has quashed the widely held belief that Mitt Romney is the inevitable nominee. Republicans are divided between the moderate Romney and a succession of bizarre right-wing candidates, of whom only Gingrich and Rick Santorum remain. The fourth candidate is Ron Paul, a congressman who seems at once both eminently sensible and dangerously extreme. He attracts a strong youth following to his Libertarian agenda, but represents, and surely knows it, little more than an omnipresent splinter group. The real fight is between the establishment and the Tea Party, and at the moment the latter faction is being led by Gingrich.

So how can Gingrich, a ten-term congressman who held the third highest office in American politics for four years, be anti-establishment? Surely, he is the very definition of Washington insider. Nevertheless, he has succeeded by adopting Palin-esque rhetoric in polished debate performances, even blaming the media elite for his problems. When the first question in a recent debate addressed the issue of his ex-wife claiming he wanted an open-marriage, his response was to lambast the moderator and all those who ran the story.

Voters do not belong in a politician’s bedroom; after all, it is their political actions that really matter, but this changes when a candidate makes the sanctity of marriage a pillar of their campaign. When a candidate argues that marriage is “worth protecting and upholding,” you would expect them to be a perfect spouse. But then, of course, it is faithful homosexual couples who represent the real evil here.

Given Gingrichs’ flaws, how can he be giving Romney such a hard fight? It seems hard to believe that in the 21st century, a candidate could lose simply because of their Mormon faith. It is even more incredible that conservative America would be prepared to elect a serial adulterer over a monogamous businessman with a nauseatingly all-American family, because they had doubts about whether a Mormon president would truly hold their same Christian values. The American electorate often make dubious decisions, but there is a more likely reason for Romney’s lukewarm support.

Hailing from Massachusetts, land of the Kennedys, Romney had to work hard to portray himself as truly right-wing. He has flip-flopped on key issues, whilst his Massachusetts health reforms are too close to Obama’s for many conservatives. Many see him as standing for nothing except himself.

Gingrich and Romney are not alone; indeed, the essence of the modern Republican Party is intrinsically hypocritical. They purport to loathe deficits, yet refuse to raise taxes on those who could afford them. They advocate small government and minimal intervention in the lives of US citizens, but detest the idea of downsizing an expensive military and are all too ready for global interventions where America has no business. They promote the American Dream, whilst defending policies and institutions which make it harder for those of limited means to advance. Campaign slogans talk of rebuilding America’s greatness, but candidates deny that America ever ceased to be great.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...” wrote slave-owner, Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Were slaves therefore equal? No, indeed the Constitution rules that each slave be counted as only three-fifths of a person. So it would seem that political hypocrisy is as American as the proverbial apple pie. Perhaps, the Grand Old Party, in seeking to emulate the Founding Fathers, the sacred cows of American society, really should nominate Newt Gingrich. Self-righteous, selfish, hypocritical, he is, in many ways, the perfect Republican.