Will anyone on the “election integrity!” Right care about this? Of course not!
Hypocrisy? Yes! But only if you believe that the rules apply to everyone. Conservatives very clearly don’t.
Hypocrisy? Yes! But only if you believe that the rules apply to everyone. Conservatives very clearly don’t.
https://twitter.com/charlesbethea/status/1500486467503673344
Actually, a stark differentiation between those who are supposed to be bound by the rules (“Them”) and those who are not (“Us”) is very much at the heart of the conservative political project.
We see the same logic play out all the time. Republicans railing against absentee voting / voting by mail while many of them have been doing it themselves - hypocritical, bad-faith cynicism? Sure. But the interesting question always is: How do these people justify their actions?
What do they tell themselves? Something like this: “The concern with absentee voting / voting by mail is that the *wrong people* get their votes counted, elevating an illegitimate political opponent; since I’m not one of those *wrong people*, this obviously doesn’t apply to me.”
The obvious hypocrisy is disregarded because the actions are fully consistent with conservatism’s higher principles: If it helps to entrench white Christian patriarchal rule, it can’t be wrong; if it undermines the power of traditional elites, it must be illegitimate.
Conservatives apply this higher principle to the law itself. Remember the Canadian trucker convoy? Conservatives declare protesters “outlaws” for the unspeakable crime of blocking a street - while celebrating the “heroism” of blockading critical infrastructure.
Describing this as “hypocrisy” is entirely correct while at the same time missing the larger point: Calling for the law to treat different groups differently is hypocritical only if you believe in equality before the law. But conservatives explicitly don’t.
In this instance, the “rioters” are seen as a radical faction pursuing a fundamentally illegitimate (leftist, woke) cause of destroying America - while the truckers are supposedly representing the true will of the people, the Volk, i.e. the part of the population that counts.
It is this fundamental difference between “Us” and “Them” that is at the heart of all of the Right’s “Higher Truths”: a clear political, social, and cultural hierarchy that justifies and actually necessities differential and discriminatory treatment.
Conservatives start from the premise that some groups are worthy of protection and deserve privilege - while others are dangerous and need to be kept in check. Once we acknowledge this as the highest principle, the conservative position is entirely consistent.
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