"We can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that. We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like."
Justice Clarence Thomas
No amount of shameless hypocrisy is too much.
Clarence Thomas knew what he was doing. He cannot help but be acutely aware that his wife, Virginia Thomas, was actively involved in attempting to reverse a particular outcome to the 2020 election. His wife had done exactly what Thomas condemned. Her text messages became a public controversy involving both him and her.
She was urging the White House stop the count of electoral votes for Biden. One of Virginia Thomas' many texts to Meadows reads:
Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!…You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.
Clarence Thomas put into practice one of the great political messaging lessons of this era. Denounce others for doing exactly what one has done or condones oneself. Don't acknowledge hypocrisy or contradiction. Keep a straight face. Be decisive and indignant.
It seems improbable as a message tactic, but we have seen it work. Trump offered ample proof of concept. He spent years insisting that he had overwhelming proof that Barack Obama was foreign-born. And then when over half of Republicans believed that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, Trump reverses field. He announced that the claim that Obama was foreign-born was an outrageous insult and lie. He said Hillary Clinton should be ashamed for having spread it. He kept a straight face. He was decisive and indignant. His partisans did not throw up their hands in disgust at having been deceived by Trump for years. Most Republican voters still believed Obama was foreign-born, and the ones who now no longer believed it thought Hillary Clinton was the guilty party. It worked!
Clarence Thomas denounced people who would flout laws and norms of democracy to get a preferred outcome. He was the sole vote on the eight-to-one decision to let the Trump White House keep secret documents that would likely include those produced by his wife. Clarence Thomas kept a straight face. He was decisive and indignant.
But doesn't anyone hold a shameless hypocrite to account? Doesn't someone point out the obvious contradiction and hypocrisy? Yes, but it doesn't matter. In this political and media environment, it is as if partisans have no memory. Partisans believe what fits their preferred outcome. The only real impediment is the little voice in the back on one's conscience observing one's own hypocrisy. The check is internal, not external. If that is turned off, one is ready.
Will he get away with it? Of course. In the political arena that matters to Thomas, the world of Fox, Newsmax, One America, The Federalist Society, and in the GOP, Clarence Thomas is a good and honorable man. He will vote to overthrow Roe. He is on the team.
Peter, your comment about Clarence Thomas, Martha Thomas and repeated duplicity is accurate, timely and unfortunately sad to acknowledge as true. Thank you
The GOP has become the party where the ends justify the means and nobody truly believes their phony moral posturing. They will stop at nothing to achieve their White Supremacist agenda and bring the whole country back to the 50's where White (nominally) Christian males were on the top of the heap.