It's How You Play the Game

Everyone has hierarchies. Everyone places things in some scale of importance. And in politics the top of that list is winning. Winning to maintain power and influence. Things you would not tolerate on the field of your child's Little League game are routine in American politics.

The four cardinal virtues, from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (meaning restriction or restraint), and courage (or fortitude), the three theological virtues, from the letters of St. Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love); all of these traditional Western virtues are subservient to winning.

This is not a quality of one party or another, it is a characteristic of all.

Here Shapiro describes a typically smarmy act by the Democrat Harry Reid, an act he casually admits to, that has some bearing on the Kavanaugh embarrassment:

"...2012. We remember this one. Former Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney is running a tight, competitive race with incumbent Democrat President Barack Obama.

So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., simply slanders him by stating on the floor of the Senate that Romney hadn’t paid his taxes:

So, the word's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes. Because he hasn't.

Let him prove it! It's not Reid's job to prove that he didn't pay taxes. It's Romney's job to prove that he did pay taxes. You have to prove that you obeyed the law.

Reid then released a statement explaining, “As I said before, I was told by an extremely credible source that Romney has not paid taxes for ten years.” 

(And I was told my an extremely credible source that Harry Reid likes to murder puppies in his backyard!) 

How did Reid respond to the fact that it turns out Romney did pay his taxes and that he was an abject liar? Here's what he told CNN's Dana Bash on CNN on March 31, 2015: 

Dana Bash: So, no regrets, about Mitt Romney, about the Koch brothers? Because some people have even called it McCarthy-ite.

Harry Reid: Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn't win, did he?

That’s all that matters to Democrats. Not the truth. Not decency. Winning."

Years ago the White House was doing exit interviews of people who were leaving government service after coming to Washington with Reagan. There were a surprising number who left early and the White House was interested in why. The answers in the interviews were consistent: They could not stand the people they had to work with.