Politics

The politics of hypocrisy: How scandal is treated with selective outrage

Flawed midterm candidates are testing voters’ tolerance for hypocrisy

By Howard Kurtz Fox News

Published October 5, 2026 3:00am EDT

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Erick Erickson, the longtime, ultraconservative Atlanta radio host, just unloaded a screed that whacked both Democrats and Republicans. 

"Both sides serve up a crap sandwich of a candidate, point across the aisle at the other side’s crap sandwich, and insist you have to eat theirs because the other one is worse."

In keeping with the culinary metaphor, this struck me because I've long felt that national politics has increasingly become a stew of hypocrisy. 

To watch Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders endorse Graham Platner, the exceedingly weird Maine Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo, was stomach-turning. You just know the liberal wing would have savaged him if he was a Republican. They and other Dems finally jumped off the bandwagon when news emerged that Platner's former girlfriend alleged that he had raped her. 

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Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, points to a covered tattoo that had previously been an........

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