Graham Platner, Ken Paxton expose both parties’ hypocrisy on scandals

Imagine for a moment that Graham Platner was a Republican.

Democrats would go nuclear, declaring him a terrible person.

He is totally unfit for duty, they would shout, having sex with other women while married.

They said how could he represent Maine in the Senate when he had a Nazi tattoo?

WATCH: MAINE VOTERS DIVIDED OVER PLATNER AS SCANDALS SHADOW DEMOCRATIC FIRST PLACE

look at this New York TimesShe found three women who said he was physically violent towards them and made them extremely uncomfortable.

How could Republicans imagine he could win the election?

But of course Platner is a Democrat – a pretty liberal Democrat – so that’s okay. They ignore all the nonsense that comes up and play their military records.

Pure, unadulterated hypocrisy.

NYT PANEL DISCUSSES WHETHER GRAHAM PLATNER IS A ‘DIRTY BAG’ TO TRUMP ERA POLITICS OR IS THE DEMOCRATS’ ANSWER

To be fair, several Democrats raised questions about Platner’s checkered past and expressed doubts about his candidacy.

So what was he thinking as he ran into office with an oyster boat full of luggage? (He doesn’t make much money from oysters, but that fits his salt-of-the-earth image.)

This race is drawing a lot of national attention because Democrats need to flip a state like Maine if they have to have a serious chance of taking control of the Senate.

It was a huge miscalculation for Platner to think he could run for the Senate and wall off part of his life, saying he drank too much, struggled with depression and PTSD after combat duty, but had left that part of his life behind.

Platner faces a number of allegations regarding his past behavior. (Sophie Park/Getty Images)

Platner, 41, joined the Marines after high school and served three combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

Platner has a natural charisma that draws potential voters to his side. And all most Democrats care about at this point is whether he can unseat veteran Republican senator Susan Collins.

I blame the press for coming too late. Journalists liked to cover a rough-edged character who was much more interesting than the standard suit-and-tie-clad lawyer who looked like he had been created in a consultant’s office.

Tomorrow’s Maine primary was almost upon us when the scandals broke.

GRAHAM PLATNER’S ACCUSER SLAMS NYT FOR SOFTENING THE ALLEGATIONS, SAID THE NEWS WAS A ‘GIFT’ TO THE DEMOCRAT

Remember, Maine’s plain-spoken 78-year-old governor, Janet Mills, was supposed to be the nominee. But he suspended his campaign after falling far behind, although his name remained on the ballot.

Platner doesn’t seem to be telling the truth about his Nazi tattoo. One of his ex-girlfriends, Lyndsey Fifeld, told the Times that he told her it was “my Totenkopf,” the German word for death’s head.

Platner took down his account because he worked with conservative groups and GOP campaigns, and Fifeld said that was irrelevant.

Although Platner never hit her, according to Fifeld’s testimony, he “regularly grabbed her by the shoulders – sometimes hard enough to leave marks – and once pulled her out of a taxi by grabbing her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.” In another incident, he “twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, and told her to stay there until she ‘calmed down’.” and fell asleep. “It hurt,” he said.

Moreover, Fifeld says, Platner fantasized about killing people he saw as threats and said he would rape them because rape was about power. In her 2016 diary entry, Fifeld called Platner “the most toxic, completely abusive man in the world who ruined my life.”

Another ex-girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, said that Platner “did not respect women”, that his behavior was “reckless” and “disturbing”, and that he once showed up drunk after Platner told her not to come. (Other exes said they had a good relationship.)

Liberal MPs such as Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna campaigned alongside Platner, but Khanna called his past behavior “misogynistic” and said he should apologize to women.

“Anything that claims physicality, anything that claims that I know what my tattoo is, those are statements from someone who is politically motivated,” Platner said in an interview with MSNOW’s Chris Hayes.

Platner is constantly dropping F-bombs at the public. Maybe Maine voters will decide they don’t care about past abuses and focus on Platner’s populist agenda, including higher wages and better health care. But clearly, if he were a Republican, his liberal allies would be singing a much different tune.

PLATNER SUPPORTER KHANNA SAYS SENATE UMUTLU’S PAST RELATIONSHIPS ARE ‘POISONIC’, BUT SAYS HE DESERVES ‘SALANCE’

No party now has a monopoly on selective outrage. Republicans became tense after Ken Paxton won the Senate nomination in Texas with President Trump’s support, defeating incumbent senator John Cornyn.

To say the state attorney general who will face Democrat James Talarico has a scandalous past would be an understatement.

Paxton was impeached by the Texas House, but the Senate did not convict him after top aides reported him to the FBI for abusing his office to help an Austin donor and real estate developer. However, the Justice Department dropped the investigation.

Reached a settlement on federal health care fraud charges. And her soon-to-be ex-husband accused her of adultery.

Platner isn’t offering Senate Republicans the tourniquet you might think; they still have their own albatross in the form of Paxton. (Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But hey, winning is the name of the game. The Texas GOP deleted posts about Paxton’s “lies” as soon as he became the nominee.

Several prominent Republicans abandoned Paxton, such as former Fort Worth mayor Betsy Price, who called Paxton “corrupt and immoral.”

But in the reddest states, which haven’t elected a statewide Democrat in 40 years, the alternative is unthinkable.

The National Republican Campaign Committee didn’t even mention Paxton on primary night, focusing instead on attacking Talarico.

KEN PAXTON DEFEATS JOHN CORNYN IN TEXAS GOP Senate Runoffs, AP PROJECTS

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who supports Cornyn, said in a radio interview that “frankly, we’re making the breakthrough.” Paxton is “all-in, ready to go to the fall elections, already on the phone raising money and doing everything you need to do to be successful… Losing is not an option when it comes to the state of Texas.”

Now flip the script. If Paxton were a Democrat, those same Texas Republicans would be screaming about how bribery, fraud, impeachment, and adultery make him completely unqualified for the Senate.

They would be wringing their hands about how embarrassing he would be for the Lone Star State.

This is also complete hypocrisy. They don’t want to lose their seat. Period.

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Some Republicans may hold their noses and support Paxton, but many may just stay home.

Maybe old standards may have melted away. After all, Donald Trump survived nearly a thousand scandals and still managed to win a second term.

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Final takeaway: Politicians will tolerate just about anything in their own battered candidate while expressing their sheer disgust for the opposing candidate if that’s what it takes to win. This is another reason why Americans hate politics.