I’m not for attacking people personally. Here’s my operating premise: “Don’t give anyone the opportunity to reject your position other than the position itself.” While I do not always follow my own rule, I do my best to keep the debate about the debate. Anything else is a distraction. Only liberals can attack their opponents personally.

Fox’s Bill O’Reilly made an off-hand comment about Maxine Waters’ hair looking like a “James Brown wig.” He later apologized for his “dumb comment.” It was dumb, but it was no more offensive than making fun of Donald Trump’s hair, over, and over, and over again. If women want to be treated like men, then they should roll with the punches like men do.

Maxine Waters is the gold standard of outrageous personal attacks. Trump doesn’t “deserve to be President,” she said. “She is just spouting the left-wing company line, and anyone who disagrees with her… well, she doesn’t brook disagreement,” O’Rreilly wrote. “That’s not patriotism madam, that’s demagoguery.”

Fox co-host Ainsley Earhardt defended Waters. “You can’t go after a woman’s looks. I think she’s very attractive.” You can only attack a man’s looks and the looks of conservative women. Black conservatives can be demeaned with no political repercussions.

Liberals have selective memories when it comes to their political crimes. The latest memory lapse is how Democrats and their liberal sycophants in the media shamed Katherine Harris who was the Secretary of State in Florida during the crucial 2000 presidential election. “That year Harris gained national attention for her role in the Florida election recount, certifying George W. Bush’s narrow victory over Al Gore and awarding him the Florida electors, which gained him the national election.”

Some of you may be too young to remember the months-long recount of “hanging chads” that sent the election into electoral chaos.

The Democrats had no problem attacking Harris personally if it meant they could get a different outcome, so they pulled out all the stops:

• “For her role in the election, she was skewered as nakedly partisan and parodied on Saturday Night Live as an ambitious harpy caked in enough makeup to embarrass a drag queen.” (Slate)

• Caryl Rivers for “We News” wrote: “A Democratic operative labeled her Cruela deVil, the villainess of ‘102 Dalmatians,’ and the term got repeated everywhere. The Boston Globe said maybe she was planning to unwind at a drag bar, because of all her makeup, and the Boston Herald called her a painted lady. Jay Leno called the election ‘tighter than Katherine Harris’ face.’”

• “[F]ashion reporter Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, used words such as ‘trowel’ to describe the secretary’s failed attempt at makeup artistry. The eyelashes are most certainly fake, she wrote in a particularly vicious article in the Style section. The Post, however, was not alone in its pummeling, which its own ombudsman criticized as wrong. ‘Katherine Harris’s makeup artist should be impeached. Or double-punched. Or made to perform some sort of community service, say, cleaning up the state’s hurricane of errant chads for a couple of weeks,’ said a brief but nasty report in the feature pages of the Boston Globe.” (Washington Times)

It didn’t matter that Harris followed the path that any feminist would have found exemplary:

“After earning a history degree at Agnes Scott College near Atlanta and studying in Switzerland and Spain, she headed off to Harvard, bastion of all things East Coast, where she picked up a graduate degree with a focus on international trade.

“A former IBM executive and real estate agent, she gets hammered by opponents for her unapologetic ambition. . . .

“An editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution needled her not for her style, but for her professional get-up-and-go.

“‘She is no mere flunky carrying water for the higher-ups,’ the editorial read.

“‘Girlfriend has a game plan with her own ambitions at the center.’”

In addition to her non-political background, Harris was also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 13th district, the 23rd Secretary of State of Florida, and a member of the Florida Senate from the 24th district.

None of this mattered. Why? Because she was conservative in her political views. And because of her conservative views, it was OK to shame her personally.