On Monday, Jim Geraghty worried about the end of ethics in electoral politics.  It needs careful analysis.

He begins by looking at lessons learned form Mitt Romney being defeated by Barack Obamas:

Republicans learned a hard lesson that year: that nominating the better man did not mean he would win the election. And if the electorate could be so easily persuaded by false accusations, nominating a more ethical man with a better character didn’t matter much.

Heading into the 2016 presidential election, many Republicans concluded that if any person they nominated was going to be painted as the devil, they might as well nominate a man with the reputation of a devil and as ruthless as the devil and get all the advantages of nominating a devil. And the GOP, the country, and the world have been living with the consequences of that decision ever since.

He is absolutely right that Romney’s defeat strongly indicated that the better man (or woman) was no guarantee of victory – but I am not at all sure about the “might as well…devil” part.  He contends that Democrats are currently struggling with the same thing after Harris was soundly defeated by Trump and that such explains Platner, et. al.  Which is where I have to call “hogwash.”

Contending that Harris was a “better person” than Trump is where the logic begins to break down.  Trump is very far from an angel – very.  But Harris was an appointed, undemocratically selected candidate (strike one).  She was a word-salad spewing empty suit (strike two).   She failed to expose the biggest political lie ever perpetrated on the American people – that Biden was competent to fulfill his duties.  She had to know better (strike three).  And we have not even gotten into personal morality  – that her political rise started in Willie Brown’s bed or her apparent excessive use of alcohol.  Leading Dems may have thought she was a better person, but please.

The American people knew the devil too far when they saw it.

I would have to say that the average American has learned to distinguish between personal and public morality.  I would also say that the Democrat activists class has not learned to make that distinction.  I have said many times here that Trump’s conduct of his personal life has historically been atrocious – although I would add there is little sign of that atrocity in recent years.  But he also never tried to hide it.  He was , in fact, quite bold about it.  Donald Trump is a lot of things, but he is not a liar.  He may not tell you everything, sometimes he evens tells you he is not telling you everything.  But falsehoods seem an impossibility from the man.  While his personal morality is far less than admirable, his public morality is almost unique in politics.

His seeming inability to lie stands in very sharp contrast to Harris whose very campaign was born of uncovering the complete lie that was the Biden administration.  A lie that she obviously participated in.  That explains his election in spite of his personal foibles.  If you read into presidential history, lots of president’s were awful when it comes to their marital relations.  And they lied about it in public.  Trump is almost refreshing, even if distasteful, by comparison.

Platner is not explained by a lack of moral consideration, but Democratic elites inability to understand the moral recalibration that has occurred.  Those elites seem incapable of knowing that it is not the crime, it is the cover-up.  They tried to pretend Platner was an innocent until proven otherwise – that’s the problem.  It might seem therefore, that he would stand a better chance against Collins if he embraced his bad boy stuff.  Nonsense.  The American people are able to contend with marital infidelity, but pedophilia and and support for a genocidal regime, well, that is a step too far. Morality is not abandoned, it is recalibrated.

I am completely unwilling to proclaim Trump “God’s man” in any fashion.  But God’s providence is at work even in those that are not His.  God once commanded one of his prophets to marry a prostitute as an object lesson to Israel.  Such indicates that God makes many of the moral distinctions just discussed.  Platner is not explained by an absence of moral consideration, but by a failure to understand God’s morality, and providence, in all its fullness.