The Republican Party built it's political power base by mass-marketing a singular bogus claim: people who ascribe to right-wing conservative beliefs behave more honestly, ethically and morally than people who do not.

They've preached that every social ill results from individual moral failing and/or a lack of religious faith: poverty, violent crime, teenage pregnancy, terrorist attacks, substance abuse—even natural disasters.

They've insisted that so-called “liberal” values and policies  —empiricism, human rights, pluralism, collective bargaining, stem cell research, comprehensive health education, environmental protection, progressive taxation, Social Security, women’s rights—  caused an epidemic of moral failure, weakened national resolve, and left us first slouching, then skipping towards Gomorrah.

The nation’s problems, they claimed, were just the citizenry’s lack of conservative religiosity writ large; their solution was to eradicate the slightest hint of “liberalism” in governance, adopt policies based upon “correct” right-wing ideology (found mostly in ultraconservative religious teachings), and place ultraconservative Republicans in charge of government.

Enter Sarah Palin, touted as the latest examplar of curative Right Wing Values. She's a religious conservative who ascribes to the Conservatively Correct views on social issues, notably opposing birth control, comprehensive sex education, and reproductive choice for women. She raised her kids according to these values, and guess what?  Her unmarried teenage daughter got pregnant.

Yes, in the best-resourced family of hardest-core preachers of right-wing conservative values, 17 year-old Bristol fooled around under Mom and Dad's nose (just like most other teenagers). As if
David Vitter, Dr. David Hagar, Helen Chenoweth, Ed Schrock, Vito Fossella, Duke Cunningham, Rev. Ted Haggert, Cardinal Bernard Law, Henry Hyde, George Roche III, Mark Foley, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingstone, Jimmy Swaggert and Phil Giordano weren't proof enough, we're reminded again that Republican claims of moral superiority are a scam.

Right-wing conservatives are more likey --not less-- to abuse the public trust and engage in corrupt, deviant and exploitative behavior. Their constant sermonizing and moral attacks are just camouflage
and misdirection from their own misdeeds.

Republicans are spinning the Palin teenage pregnancy as an act of virtue because she's agreed to marry the father and have the baby. Can you imagine the Republican reaction similarly if a teenage Chelsea Clinton or unmarried Sarah Gore got preganant? The Right would be lining-up to call them sluts, fornicators, etc. and would blame it all on their parents' "liberal" values.

Time for the media and all honest Americans to call bullshit on the Republican morality scam.