republicans are entirely consistent, because they believe in one thing -- defense and advancement of a hierarchical society with whites over blacks, men over women, etc.
everything else is just a tool to serve that purpose.
it's like focusing on the elevator buttons when you see someone use them throughout the day. hey, you're inconsistent, sometimes you press up and sometimes you press down! well, yeah. that's because i'm not trying to be consistent about which elevator button i use in and of itself. i consistently press whichever button happens to get me to where i want to go at the time. sometimes that's up, sometimes that's down. you need to focus on where i'm going to understand.
so it is with republican "principles" about states' rights, or outrage about personal behavior, standards for scandals, etc. those are just the elevator buttons. where they're going is all about that hierarchy.
that's why there really is no behavior scandalous enough get them to turn on a republican; but any pretend scandal that tears down a democrat is a complete outage for them. many of them still probably don't understand how emails work and what it means to have a private email server. it's all just geeky technodetails.
and none of them ever gave a rat's behind about all the republican using private email for public work or vice versa. none of them care about sexual assault or sexual misbehavior. all just buttons to press.
but it's not enough to just note that they are being consistent, just at something else. we need to focus on that something else. because once you realize it, the thing we were focused on was just a distraction. missing the point of their actions entirely.
what they're doing it supporting a right-winger or tearing down an opponent of the right wing. they don't care about the scandal. they care that *you* care about the scandal. it's a button to press. they'll press the up or down button depending on which one gets them to the floor that promotes their side and trashes everyone else.
once you realize this then you see that all the focus on emails was a distraction. and really, it was. it was always about finding a pretense to keep pounding a public narrative where hillary could be portrayed in a negative light.
so many stories available to the media about hillary, most of them about her doing a good job and having sensible policies and so on. but the email story let them talk about her negatively, so they went with it again and again.
did these people care when the trumps did the same thing? did these same people care when they were way, way worse with classified information and electronic security?
to say they were hypocrites is to miss the point entirely. talking about emails was all about finding an excuse to smear her to destroy her career. the real scandal is that the media ate it up and served up the most lopsided and biased presidential campaign seasons ever.
they are consistent in tearing up hillary over a ridiculous fake scandal, and endlessly supporting donnie though the most ludicrous, scandal-ridden administration ever. because what they are consistent about is supporting right-wingers and tearing down everyone else.
that's the story.