The Lazy Way to Successful Punditry

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I tell you, folks, I'm weakening. I'm about to do something I thought I'd sworn off forever.

I'm considering joining the Republican Party again.

Some of my long-term readers may recall my joining the GOP back in '05 and '06 and writing about it in this column. Not because of any ideological change of heart, but precisely because the GOP had no actual ideology other than IOKIYAR: It's OK If You're A Republican.

Back in those days, the knee-jerk Republican defense of everything from adultery to sexually propositioning teenagers to shoplifting suggested to me that whatever I did, I'd always find a host of defenders so long as I had the correct political affiliation. Not that I was going to do any of those things, mind you, but it was just nice to know.

Well, I left the party, but I have to say, I'm sorely tempted to join up again. Not just for the complete lack of moral accountability (even though the David Vitter and Mark Sanford cases show that that's still alive and well), but because it would make writing this column so much easier.

See, I'm basically a lazy person. It's a real drag sometimes when I'm writing this column to go back and actually check various sources to make sure that the things I'm saying about people have at least some basis in fact.

But if I were a conservative Republican, I wouldn't have to do any of that stuff. If I saw something that looked outrageous enough, I could write about it without having to check around and see if it actually happened. And if it turned out not to be true -- hey, who cares?

As an example, let's take de facto Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh recently went on the air with a real blockbuster of a story: Time magazine reporter Joe Klein had uncovered a thesis written by Barack Obama while Obama was a student at Columbia University.

The thesis was supposedly harshly critical of the U.S. Constitution, stating, "The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

Only problem was, as Limbaugh was informed almost immediately, the story was a complete hoax, a satire posted on an allegedly humorous blog called "Jumping In Pools."

Joe Klein himself denied ever writing such a piece. "It is completely false," Klein posted on Time's online blog "Swampland." "I've never seen Obama's thesis. I have no idea where this report comes from -- but I can assure you that it's complete nonsense."

Rush, as the kids say, had been punk'd.

No matter, Limbaugh smoothly stated in his very next radio hour. He repeated the false quotes, then admitted that they were probably fake, but -- and this is the cool part -- he still stood by them because (a) he himself had been misquoted recently, and (b) he "knows Obama thinks it."

You can see how, to a lazy person such as myself, this would be very attractive. As a liberal, I can't get away with, for example, saying Sarah Palin once actually claimed she had foreign policy experience because she could "see Russia from her house."

As a liberal columnist, I'd have to point out that Palin never actually said that, but that that quote was instead from "Saturday Night Live" performer Tina Fey's hilarious impression of Palin. If I didn't, you can bet there'd be a deluge of letters lambasting me for making something up. And the defense "Well, it's a lie, sure, but I know Sarah Palin thinks that way" just wouldn't cut it.

But if I were a wingnut -- boy howdy, anything goes. I could make a crazy accusation, find out it's false within the hour, and stand by it anyway. Even after it's shown to be a lie, I could circulate the story on the Internet via chain e-mails that circle around in the Internet forever.

It's really tempting. Someone talk me out of it.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

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I tell you, this being a Republican just gets better and better every day. Not a week goes by but that I don't find some new and exciting reason why. This week was no exception.

See, I have a confession to make. I'm kind of a jerk. I can be a real mean-spirited jackass on occasion. It's something I've had to deal with all my life. Sometimes it's been a real struggle, and, as people who know me can attest, not always successful.

But a couple of things that I've seen and read recently have made me think that my problem might be solved by becoming a Republican.

The first of these was last week's edition of "60 Minutes" in which Lesley Stahl interviewed House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Stahl began by quoting a statement Pelosi had made about bringing "civility" back to the political process. Then she began scolding Pelosi by bringing up things she'd said about the Republicans, such as that they're "immoral" and "corrupt," and "running a criminal enterprise."

"I mean, you're one of the reasons we have to restore civility in the first place," Stahl chided.

Doggone right. I mean, how does Pelosi expect to restore civility to the political debate if she's going to be all nit-picky and critical about little things like multiple corruption indictments and sexual harassment of underage boys?

I mean, the nerve! What does she think she is, the leader of some sort of opposition party? Why can't she be more like that nice Joe Lieberman, who never says anything bad about anybody but other Democrats?

Then I heard about the TV ad for a Senate race out in Missouri, in which actor Michael J. Fox appeared and announced his support for stem cell research, and by extension, candidate Claire McCaskill, who's for it. Her opponent, Jim Tallent, opposes it.

Fox, as you may have heard, suffers from Parkinson's disease, and boy, does this ad show it. He looks terrible, all jerky and twitchy. But Republican talk show host Rush Limbaugh was not impressed. Fox, he asserted, was either deliberately off his medication to exaggerate his symptoms or he's faking. Fox is, after all, an actor, said Limbaugh, who apparently never saw "Doc Hollywood." Limbaugh even provided a little mocking imitation of Fox to prove his point.

Or take Wyoming's sole member of the House, Republican Barbara Cubin. After a recent debate in which Thomas Rankin, Cubin's Libertarian opponent, accused her of taking contributions from indicted former Speaker Tom DeLay, Cubin stormed over to Rankin and said, "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."

"That chair" refers to the motorized wheelchair to which Rankin is confined because of multiple sclerosis. Cubin's defense? "He misrepresented her and insulted her integrity during the debate," according to Cubin's campaign. (As it turns out, Cubin had accepted $22,520 from one of Tom DeLay's PACs.)

That's when it hit me. As an independent who leaned Democratic, I would have been ashamed of myself had I looked at some unfortunate person suffering from an incurable degenerative disease and sneered "Aw, he's just faking it. He's just playing for sympathy."

In those days, had I lost my temper and threatened to slap somebody in a wheelchair -- for telling the truth, no less -- people would come down on me like a ton of bricks.

There'd be angry letters sneering about "aren't liberals supposed to be so nice and tolerant," etc. That's what happens when you're a liberal and you say anything negative.

But as a Republican, no one expects anything from me. I can say anything I want, including being nasty to the terminally ill or disabled, and no one says a mumblin' word.

And it's not just the sick. As a Republican, I can even make fun of the bereaved. You may remember a few months ago, Republican pundit Ann Coulter talked about the widows of Sept. 11 victims who were calling for further investigation of intelligence failures in the times leading up to the attacks. "I've never seen anyone enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," she snapped.

I'm not saying that Democrats never say anything nasty or mean-spirited. This is, after all, politics. I'm sure my fellow Republicans, as they read this column, are mentally composing letters in which they detail half a dozen negative things a Democrat or liberal has said.

But that's precisely my point. Democrats get criticized for it. Nationally famous reporters scold them for it. We Republicans get a bye. Do you have any idea how liberating that is?

So thank you, Rush Limbaugh. Thank you, Ann Coulter. Thank you, Barbara Cubin. You've set me free in ways I never was when I was a liberal. You've made it OK in the last few years to be the bastard I was born to be. Now I can relax.

Let's just hope those darn Democrats don't win in November. The last thing we want is for viciousness, meanness, thin skins and bad temper to go out of fashion.

More Adventures In Republicanism: The Question

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I've stated several times in this column that the reason I became a Republican was to take advantage of the party's core principle, namely that everything is OK if you're a Republican.

I'll admit I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that things like adultery are excusable for Republicans because some Democrats have done them, yet they're still not excusable for Democrats. But that's OK, I'm working on that. But as I've gotten deeper into the inner mysteries of the GOP, I've discovered a number of other wonderful things that are available to initiates.

Take, for example, the tactic of accusation by question. By using this, you can make any wild claim you want without a shred of evidence, then say "Hey, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, I'm just asking some questions here."

If you're unsure of what I'm talking about, here's an example. In a recent discussion on the Mark Foley scandal, North Carolina's own Rep. Patrick McHenry asked CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "What person, group or political entity had these nasty instant messages and possessed the e-mails in order to solicit this story? And in a partisan environment like we're in right now in Washington, four weeks out from a national election, that question must be asked."

Blitzer responded by asking him, "So what you're suggesting [is] that Democrats are behind the timing of the release of this information? Is that your accusation?" McHenry responded again with the question: "Well, look," he said, "all the fact points lead to one question: Did Rahm Emanuel or Nancy Pelosi have any involvement on the strategic or tactical level?"

Do you have any evidence, Blitzer asked, that this might be the case? In fact, Blitzer asked several times if there was any evidence, any evidence at all, that any Democrat sat on this story until right before election time for partisan purposes. (This is how you know, by the way, that Blitzer is one of those liberal media types. This manic obsession with "evidence" and "proof" when you're accusing someone of a heinous act is the hallmark of America-hating liberalism.)

Finally, Blitzer asked, "I'm just asking if you're just throwing out an accusation or if you have any hard evidence?"

"No," McHenry answered, then delivered the coup de grace: "It's a question, Wolf. The question remains, were they involved? And it's a question. It's not an accusation."

I have to tell you, I absolutely love this. In fact, I love it so much that I've started using this in my own life. For example, the other day, my wife asked me, "Honey, have you been drinking the milk straight from the container again?"

"Well, Pookie," I responded, "I think the question really needs to be asked: Did Clifford [our Golden Retriever] get into the refrigerator and rummage around looking for snacks? Was he actually the one who drank milk straight from the container?"

"What?" she said.

"You have to look at the fact points. The dog was in the same general area as I was. It's important to ask these questions to get at the truth."

"Let me get this straight," she said. "You're accusing the dog of opening the refrigerator, unscrewing the cap from a gallon of milk, tipping it up, drinking from it, and then putting it back on the refrigerator shelf? All without spilling a drop on the floor?"

"I'm not accusing anyone of anything," I replied. "But in this environment, the questions need to be asked."

"Uh-huh," she said. "And do you have any evidence at all that the dog is even capable of this?"

"Well, do you have any evidence he wasn't involved?"

"I'd think the fact that the dog lacks opposable thumbs is pretty good evidence. That and the fact that you still have the cap from the milk container in your hand."

I looked down at the incriminating circle of plastic.

"Well, we have to ask whether or not the dog nuzzled up to my hand and placed it there."

"Oh, for the love of..."

"That dog will do anything to discredit me!" I blurted. "He still blames me for the whole neutering thing!"

"Good lord, this is a new low, even for you. Why don't you just admit that you did it and stop trying to accuse the poor dumb dog?" Clifford, vaguely aware he was being discussed, raised his head from where he lay stretched out on the floor and thumped his tail once.

"I'm not accusing anyone. It's a question, not an accusation. And these are questions that... "

"Need to be asked, right, I got that part. Here's a question for you. When is this Republican nonsense going to stop?"

Nov. 8, probably.

Foley-Gate Restores My Faith in Republicanism

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As one who just joined the Republican Party this year, I have to say that I was extremely disheartened at first by the events surrounding Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley.

Foley, as you may know if you haven't been living in a cave, recently resigned after it was revealed that he had been sending suggestive, sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to male House pages, some as young as 16 years old.

It was disheartening for so many reasons. There's the sleaze angle, of course. Some of these messages are way creepy. But what really disappointed me was the way other Republicans acted at first.

Look, I joined the GOP for one reason and one reason only: because whatever you get caught doing, you can usually depend on the party to rise up as one and rally to your defense.

Whether your little peccadillo involves adultery (Rudy Giuliani), gambling (William Bennett), or even petty theft (Claude Allen), you used to be able to count on party leaders to claim (1) It's all a political ploy; (2) Hey, he said he was sorry, now leave him alone; (3) This is all really Bill Clinton's fault.

Now, just because Foley's sexually harassing teenagers, they started acting like he's radioactive or something. I started asking, have these people forgotten the unofficial motto of the party, namely IOKIYAR (It's OK If You're a Republican)?

As always, I want to make it clear that I have no intention of ever actually needing my fellow Republicans to watch my back. I'm not planning to describe my manly parts to any teenagers, male or female, and certainly not in any medium that can be easily copied and disseminated across the World Wide Web.

Nor have I any plans to gamble away millions, steal from Target, or commit indiscretions with female staffers.

It was just the idea that if I did, there'd be an entire American political party there to defend me that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

It's not like Foley didn't make all the right moves after the scandal came to light. He resigned, said he was sorry and checked himself into rehab.

Now, this last bit may seem odd at first when you consider that Foley claims he wasn't drunk on the House floor when he was sending lewd text messages to teenage boys. But who really cares? When you screw up, you have to check into rehab. How else will people know you're really sorry?

So after Foley did the whole mea culpa dance, did the party do its duty and close ranks behind him? Heck no. There was a whole bunch of "investigation this" and "FBI that" and a lot of hand-wringing about who knew about this ahead of time.

One Republican congressman, Kentucky's Ron Lewis, even said, "If anyone in our leadership has done anything wrong, then I will be the first in line to condemn it."

Sounds more like that liberal mania for accountability than something a good Republican would say. This was not the party I joined a few months ago.

Fortunately, after a few days, some members of the party began to come to their senses and started putting the blame for this whole situation where it really belongs, by which I mean the media and the Democrats.

"You're feeding right into the Democrats," scolded Rep. John Shimkus, who heads the House organization that's tasked with looking out for House pages. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. This is an October surprise, and you guys have fallen hook, line and sinker for it."

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert voiced a similar sentiment: "We have a story to tell, and the Democrats, in my view, have put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to put us on defense."

Now that's more like it! The real crime, after all, is not sexually harassing teenage boys, but reporting about it.

And in election season, while the Republicans are trying to "tell their story," too! What were these reporters thinking?

I mean, Kirk Fordham, chief of staff to the head of the National Republican Campaign Committee, has come forward and revealed that he'd told Hastert's office about Foley's e-mail habits three years ago. If the speaker's office can keep this sort of thing under their hats for three years, shouldn't a few reporters be able to keep their mouths shut to avoid influencing the election? How dare they make a big fuss over the leadership ignoring reports of sexual predation? Don't they care that we're at war with terrorists who want to cut our heads off?

So it's good to know that, while a few weak sisters in the GOP are losing their backbone, there are still a few people who'll stand up for the party's guiding principle, its polar star, if you will: IOKIYAR, even if "it" is propositioning teenage boys.

It restores my faith in the party. Not that I mean to do that, mind you. I'm just saying.

Hello, Tech Support? My Talking Points Don't Work Anymore

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The other morning, I was drinking my coffee and reading the news. That was when I saw the story.

I stopped, frozen in shock, my cup halfway to my lips. I put down the coffee cup, picked up the phone, and dialed a number I knew by heart.
After one ring, a recorded voice answered.

"Thank you for calling Republican Technical Support. All of our service representatives are either with other customers or testifying before a grand jury. Please stay on the line."

I waited, sipping my coffee and listening to a bright, perky Muzak version of Toby Keith's "The Angry American." After a long wait, another mechanical voice came on.

"If you'd like to complain about liberal media, Press 1. If you'd like to convey a message to the president about how great he is, press 2. For the latest Republican buzzword or talking point, press 3. For all other matters, please press 4. If you're experiencing a hurricane or other natural disaster, please call back later."

I thought a moment, then pressed 4. There was another long wait.

"Republican Technical Support," a man finally said. "What is the nature of your problem?"

"Have you seen them?" I demanded. "Have you seen them?!"

"Seen what, sir?"

"Those news stories! About this report from the Senate Intelligence Committee!"

"Oh. Those news stories. What about them?"

"What do you mean what about them? The Senate Intelligence Committee has said there was never any connection between that al-Qaida guy Zarqawi and Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war! It even says Saddam didn't trust Islamic extremists and wanted them locked up!"

"Is that a problem?"

"Is that a problem? Isn't the fact that Hussein was harboring al-Qaida fugitives and was going to give them WMDs one of the reasons we invaded Iraq? Actually, isn't it one of the few remaining justifications we have left?"

"I don't know, let me check."

The next words were muffled, as if the guy on the other end had his hand over the receiver.

"Hey, Sanjay! What was the reason they invaded Iraq again? No, that was three months ago. Look at the updated manual."

I could hear an even more muffled reply.

"Yup, that's the reason," the cheerful rep said when he came back. "Zarqawi and Saddam, buddies for life."

"But now that's... hey, wait a minute. Who's Sanjay?"

"My supervisor."

"Where are you guys, anyway?"

"Bangalore... uh, I mean, Omaha. Yeah, that's it. Omaha. You know, Iowa."

"Omaha's in Nebraska."

"Yeah. Nebraska. That's what I meant."

"Oh. My. God. The Republicans outsourced their tech support to India?"

"No, no, we're in Nebraska. I swear it. Whoopie tie-yie-yay. Whee doggies."

"You're not... never mind. What am I supposed to do here? I'm new at this Republican business. I've been with the Party only a few months. I need your help. The justifications for the Iraq war are broken. How do I fix them?"

"Hang on, let me look it up."

There was a rustling of papers.

"OK, you could say what the White House press secretary said."

"Which was?"

"This is old news. Move along. Nothing to see here."

"Does that work?"

"I don't see how," he admitted. "Wait, have you tried doing what the vice president did? When he was on 'Meet The Press' after the report came out, he just kept saying there was a relationship between Zarquawi and Saddam. When Tim Russert brought the report up, Cheney just blew it off and said he hadn't read it."

"He hadn't read it? He actually said that?"

"Pretty slick, huh?"

"If slick is the word in your native language for stupid, then yeah."

"Wait, here's another one. Condoleezza Rice, on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'There were ties between Iraq and al-Qaida.' Looks like the official fix for your problem is just to pretend the report never happened."

"You mean I'm supposed to just ignore this report that says that, rather than being a supporter of al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein, and this is a quote: 'was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime'? You want me to ignore the fact that the report states that Saddam wanted to lock Zarqawi up, not give him a nuclear weapon? You want me to just keep saying the same old things, even though those have been discredited?"

"That's the ticket."

"So the 'fix' you propose is just to totally ignore reality?"

"Actually, the official technical term for that is 'staying the course.'"

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was beginning to get a headache. "I'm not sure I can do that."

His voice turned suspicious. "Are you sure you're a Republican?"

"I'm trying," I said. "I really am."

"Well, there's the old standby. You can accuse the committee of partisanship and politicizing the war in an election year. Then, maybe throw in some wisecrack about Alec Baldwin or Michael Moore."

"The partisanship thing won't work," I said morosely. "It's a Republican-controlled committee in a Republican-controlled Senate."

"Wait, I thought they fixed that."

"Not yet," I said. "Not yet."

Clueless in Connecticut: From the Case Files of Sluice Tundra, Private Eye

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It was a hot August day in the city without dreams. I stood by my office window, trying to catch a breeze and sipping from my last cold can of Old Cambodian (the beer that made Phnom Penh Famous). The ceiling fan moved sluggishly, as if it were bogging down in the thick humid air. All it was really managing to do was move hot air around. Sort of like Bill O'Reilly, only less noisy and less annoying to watch.

I heard the office door open. I turned to see a short fellow in a suit standing there. He had a fringe of blonde hair around his balding dome that reminded me of a monk's haircut. When he spoke, it was in an unctuous whine that set my teeth on edge. "Mr. Tundra?"

"Hey, I said, "you look familiar."

"We met a few years ago," he said, "after the 2000 election."

"Sorry, pal," I said, "you've got the wrong gumshoe. I don't do politics. I'm Sluice Tundra, just an honest PI in a dishonest world.... "

"....trying to survive on the mean streets, where the women are fast and the bullets fly faster," he finished.

"OK. Maybe we have met," I said. Suddenly I recognized him. "Senator Lieberman," I said. "Good to see you again." I indicated the client chair across from my battered desk. "What can I do for you?"

He took a seat and pulled out a scented hankie as if to wipe his impressively broad forehead. Suddenly he burst into tears. "I don't know what happened!" He bawled. "First the vice-presidency was stolen from me, now this!"

I thought back to the headline on a newspaper I'd seen that morning. The paper had been hard to read because it had been covering a sleeping bum, but I got the gist. "Ah," I said. "Yeah. Sorry about your losing the Connecticut Democratic primary."

"I didn't lose it!" he snapped.

I'll say," I replied. "You didn't just lose it. You got your butt kicked by a guy no one had ever heard of. Jeez, what an embarrassment."

He stopped crying and glared at me. "Is this your idea of being helpful?" he said.

"Sorry."

"It was stolen, I tell you! Stolen! And I want you to find out who did it!"

"Here we go again," I muttered.

He didn't seem to hear me. "There's no way I could have lost!" he hissed. "I'm an 18-year veteran senator! A party leader! That Ned Lamont's just a county selectman! I had Joe-mentum, I tell you! And endorsements!"

"Like who?"

"Sean Hannity!" he said triumphantly. "He said I was a great guy! He said he'd send money to my campaign!"

"He did?"

"And Michelle Malkin! She likes me, too!"

"Why? Most Democrats make her foam at the mouth. And I mean that literally."

He calmed down a little. "She likes me because I believe the Iraq war's going great."

"Ah. So you're the one."

"I even got an endorsement from the College Republicans!" he said proudly. "They were going to come work for me!"

"Wait," I said. "I thought you said you were running in the Democratic primary."

"I was."

"So -- and I'm just speculating here -- you think maybe the reason Democratic primary voters rejected you is because they mistook you for a Republican? "

"But but I'm bipartisan!"

"Well, if trying to please people who call your fellow Democrats 'nuts' and 'traitors' and 'terrorist supporters' is what you call bipartisan, I guess that's true. I call it being a chump."

His face got red. "You can't call me that! I'm good friends with the president! He even kissed my cheek at the State of the Union address!"

"I think I'm beginning to see the problem," I said. "You checked Dubbya's approval ratings lately?"

I closed the notebook. "Case solved, senator. You ran as the Democrat the Republicans Love, while Republicans were kicking Democrats in the teeth every chance they got. You tied your fate to a president and a war that both took a huge dive in the polls."

"But but this will destroy the Democratic Party! It's been taken over by radicals and left-wing nuts!"

"So I hear. I mostly hear that from Republicans and right-wing talk show hosts. I'm sure they have the best interests of the Democrats at heart. Maybe if you didn't spend so much time worrying about whether the Republicans were going to say mean things about the Democrats, you might have done better."

I got up and walked to the door. "Here's another clue, senator. Read a paper sometime. Being against the war and wanting the troops to come home isn't a radical leftist position anymore. It's gone mainstream. And by the way, it's not just the war. I'd appreciate it if you'd convey that to Senator Clinton as well. You obviously were slow to get the message, but after this, maybe she will."

I opened the door and stood aside, showing him the way out.

He was beginning to turn purple. "I'll run as an Independent!" he sputtered. "You haven't heard the last of Joe Lieberman!"

"Unfortunately," I sighed, "That's probably true."

Why I'm Turning Republican

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My good friends, I have a momentous decision to announce.

For years, I have proudly listed my voter registration as “Unaffiliated.” I’ve been proud of my stance as a political independent. But in these troubled times, with deep divisions that have rent our country, I think it’s time I made a stand and declared for one party or the other.

So I’ve decided to become a Republican.

I know this comes as a shock to some of you. And, I confess, it wasn’t an easy decision for me. After all, there are a lot of things that the Republicans have claimed to stand for lately that I don’t agree with: Teaching religious theories in the public schools. Warrantless wiretaps in blatant disregard of well-established law. Stuff like that.

But then I looked around and I realized that all of that stuff is just window dressing. The current Republican Party stands for just one principle. That principle is summed up in the acronym IOKIYAR, which stands for It’s OK If You’re A Republican.

I think, deep down, I’ve known about this for years. I mean, Republicans continued to lionize former Education Secretary William Bennett, even after it was revealed in 2003 that Bennett had lost up to $8 million at the Las Vegas gambling tables.

Now, if I were a famous Democrat, losing $8,000, much less $8 million, would get me pilloried by every right-wing pundit in Christendom. But not ol’ Gamblin’ Bill. It’s nobody’s business, right-wing pundits insisted. It’s a victimless crime, after all. What they were really saying, of course is: IOKIYAR.

Then there’s Rudy Giuliani. Rudy’s had, shall we say, a little fidelity problem. At one point, his wife had to get a restraining order to keep Rudy from moving his mistress into the mayoral mansion, considering that said wife and kids were still living in the mansion at the time.

If a Democratic elected official gets accused of a little extramarital hanky-panky in the house provided for him by the government — well, need I say more? But IOKIYAR! Rudy was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention. He’s even being touted as a possible successor to Lord Dubbya Bush.

I could go on. Rush Limbaugh’s admitted prescription drug addiction. Sexual predator Bill O’Reilly’s obscene phone calls and falafel fetish. And, of course, there’s Dick Cheney’s whole shooting your buddy in the face and telling the police to buzz off till the next morning thing. These guys aren’t just tolerated by the GOP. They’re heroes.

I took note of all of these things at the time they were happening. Fool that I am, however, I never realized what IOKIYAR could mean for me personally.

But the scales finally fell from my eyes after I heard the story of former Bush domestic policy adviser Claude Allen.

Allen, a former aide to Republican icon Jesse Helms, a former Bush nominee for a judgeship in the Fourth Circuit, recently left his cushy job at the White House to “spend more time with his family.” Then, in a shocking twist, Allen was arrested and charged with, of all things, defrauding Target stores. Allegedly, Allen was buying merchandise, taking it to his car, going back in with the receipt, picking the same item off the shelves, and going to the service desk and demanding a refund.

Now, a black Democratic politican (say, Jesse Jackson) accused of this sort of thing would be lucky not to be given a symbolic public flogging of Clintonian proportions. It’s absolutely true that a person in Allen’s position committing this type of offense is showing signs of a serious mental illness and that he deserves our sympathy.

I doubt seriously, however, that a Democrat, if caught committing petty theft, could expect any sympathy from the compassionate conservatives of the right. But that’s exactly what Allen’s getting from no less a source than the president his ownself.

“If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen’s life, and that is really sad,” George Dubbya said after hearing the news.

And if Republican pundits and bloggers mention it at all, their tone ranges from sympathy for Allen’s plight, to suggestions that the crime was actually committed by Allen’s “Evil Twin” (no, I didn’t make that up) to (and this is the most common) indignation at those awful, awful, AWFUL liberals for daring to even bring this up.

And that’s when it hit me. The Republican Party is the place for me. Because whether it’s adultery, drug addiction, gambling or petty theft, you can always count on the party to pull together, circle the wagons and back you up.

Not that I’m planning any of those things, of course, but, you know, stuff happens. And it’s got to be a warm and fuzzy feeling to know that, whatever your personal failings or peccadilloes, IOKIYAR. Next week, I’m headed down to join up.

Now if I could only get my wife on board with this …