Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus has a curious justification for his party’s opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act. On Wednesday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, he said that banning pay discrimination based on gender would be an unacceptable case of legislating morality.
“I don’t think laws can circle around what’s right and wrong,” he told host Andrea Mitchell. “And I don’t think that you can just legislate these issues as far as equal pay is concerned.”
Of course, many of the laws that Priebus’ party would like to see passed do “circle around what’s right and wrong.” It’s just that laws banning abortion, defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, and so on, don't threaten male supremacy or corporate bottom lines. When a bill compromises business' ability to pay its female workers less than male workers performing the same role (making it, in the words of Republican Sen. Dean Heller, part of the "war on free enterprise"), "what's right and wrong" suddenly becomes a poor standard for making laws.
Evidently, Priebus only considers moral principle a sound guide to policy when it's his kind of moral principle.