The Hypocrisy of the Sen. Craig Scandal

No, not Senator Craig's hypocrisy. The conservative commentariat's. Glenn Greenwald beats me to the punch (italics mine):

What accounts for this complete shift in right-wing commentary about the Craig story? How can it possibly be that Craig's bathroom adultery compels his resignation today, but -- weeks before the last election -- the same conduct was so irrelevant that the mere mention of it rendered Rogers the lowest "scumbag" in the nation? Other than the fact that the Craig report threatened GOP political interests in October but does not do so now, what conceivable difference exists that accounts for such a fundamentally different reaction among the Right?

...there is actually a more pernicious element visible here. Back in October, scads of right-wing pundits pretended that Craig's bathroom behavior was irrelevant to them not because they actually believed that (as their commentary now demonstrates), but only because they were petrified that the revelation of his behavior in October would harm Republican electoral prospects. It is just conclusively clear that so many of them insisted to their readers something they obviously did not believe -- that nothing could be less relevant than whether Larry Craig commits adultery with anonymous men in bathrooms and the only grotesque immorality is from those who report such matters.

Today, with the election safely over, that exact same behavior makes Craig a scumbag who should resign. Who would ever listen to anyone who engages in such patently duplicitous advocacy? Shouldn't all the people who were depicting Mike Rogers as Satan's spawn for reporting something so clearly irrelevant as Senator Craig's bathroom sex be condemning with equal vigor their comrades who, today, cite that same bathroom sex as a ground for mocking Craig and even demanding that he resign from the Senate? How can it possibly be that Mike Rogers was despicable slime for reporting on Craig's bathroom behavior without its being true that Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn are all despicable slime for demanding that he resign based on the same behavior?

I think mentioned recently that the conservatives are arch-deconstructionists. Words are as weapons to them. Words have no intrinsic meaning for them.