Dan Pfeiffer, one of former President Obama's communications guys and now a political commentator, said something I find thought provoking in his Substack, The Message Box.
Elections are fundamentally about issue salience — which topics are top of mind when people make their decisions. ... most voters — the voters who decide elections — already assume the worst about politicians. Hypocrisy and dishonesty are priced into the baseline. You are not giving them new or actionable information when you point out hypocrisy.
We're about to find out whether accusations of hypocrisy retain any salience in US politics. Can Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker really run as a "pro-life" Christian -- who, after he was "born again," paid a woman, not his wife, to abort a child he fathered? And now wants to further criminalize all abortions? Can kindly Doctor Mehmet Oz escape the story of hundreds of dogs murdered in lab experiments?
I got to thinking about hypocrisy when reading the New York Time's exhaustive exploration of how Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen captured the allegiance of the entire Republican Party. Suffice to say, GOPers are sold on a crackpot legal theory that advantages their political party -- and which might even prevail at the corrupt Supreme Court.
But it was a small detail that grabbed my attention. These Republicans who work so urgently to restrict mail and early voting sure like it for themselves; here's how the same House Republicans who objected to certifying Biden's win on January 6, 2021 cast their own ballots.
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