Wiggins managed a smile. Then he asked, "You left your wife to marry another woman and you’re calling me ‘liberal’?"

The union member said no more and walked away.

Wiggins is a Baptist, a husband and a father. He is also a devout Democrat who is "tired of hearing Republicans talk about Democrats as ‘liberal and immoral’ as if they mean the same thing." A lot of other Democrats agree, but admit that the well-publicized sexcapades of President Bill Clinton and Gov. Paul Patton left their party wide open to the "immoral" charge.

Wiggins, like most Democrats, doesn’t approve of adultery. "Clinton and Patton should have remained faithful husbands," Wiggins said. "What they did was disgraceful and wrong, period."

The Patton scandal cost the Democrats dearly in Kentucky, according to Wiggins. Many pundits agree. "Patton lost the state senate race for Larry Sanderson in 2002," Wiggins said. "He also lost the governor’s race for Ben Chandler last year."

Nonetheless, history instructs that the GOP isn’t scandal free:

-- President Warren G. Harding was an adulterer whose affair produced a child.

-- Other Republican philanderers include former Sen. Strom Thurmond, Congressmen Bob Livingston and Dan Burton and ex-New York Gov. Rudy Giuliani.

-- When Nancy and Ron "Family Values" Reagan wed, she was pregnant.

-- House Speaker Newt Gingrich has had several wives.

There’s more, as Wiggins pointed out. "William Bennett is a big-time gambler, Rush Limbaugh is an admitted drug addict who may even wind up in jail, and Congressman Bill Janklow of South Dakota recently was convicted of second-degree manslaughter for speeding and reckless driving that killed a motorcyclist," he said. "All of them are right-wing Republicans."

Wiggins said that what bothers him most about GOP moralizing is not just the hypocrisy but also the smug, self-righteousness that goes with it. "Who made the Republicans the guardians of morality?" Wiggins wants to know. So do a lot of Democrats.

"Conservatives often mistakenly proclaim themselves as the sole holders of morality," Thomas Hartmann wrote. "Their error comes when they define the word first and foremost in terms of personal behavior."

Hartmann, an author and host of a syndicated radio talk show, said liberals are more concerned about public morality. "Perhaps best summarized in Jesus’ description in Matthew 25 of who will (and who won’t) get into heaven, liberal morality asks: ‘Are the hungry fed? Does everybody have the housing, clothing, and health care they need?’ Are those in prison treated humanely? Are we caring for the ‘strangers’ -- the less fortunate or less competent among us -- in the same way we’d want to be cared for if we fell on hard times?’"

Liberals find public immorality disgusting, too, according to Hartmann. He defined public immorality as "movie stars using their power and position to force themselves sexually in a non-consensual way on others. Politicians using their positions to award their buddies taxpayer money in grants, contracts and tax breaks. Bureaucrats, expecting a job with industry when they leave regulatory agencies to make our air, water, or food more toxic."

The Rev. Jerry Falwell was a founding father of the Republican holier-than-thou movement. The right-wing TV preacher started the "Moral Majority."

"Conservatives like Falwell probably are free of personal sins like philandering or pot smoking and so feel righteous in condemning others...," Hartmann said. "...Because Falwell’s definition of morality is limited to private behavior, he’s comfortable hobnobbing with millionaires who make their money harming the lives of others or making the world more toxic. (Just as long as they don’t sleep with somebody of the same sex.)"

So history and current events prove that well-known national Republicans are also guilty of "personal sins" like adultery, gambling and pill popping.

But as a Democrat and union member, Wiggins defines "immorality," too, as running businesses that are major league polluters. Likewise, Wiggins fails to see the morality of employers who work their employees long hours at low pay in oftentimes dangerous conditions.

Conservative Republicans don’t seem to have a problem with impoverishing workers and stinking up the environment. They call it "free enterprise."

Democrats and union members like Wiggins call it immoral.

Conservative Republicans see nothing wrong with busting unions, closing American factories and shipping jobs abroad to exploit low-wage workers in poor countries.

Democrats and union members like Wiggins call such behavior immoral.

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh’s well-publicized drug problem, Hartmann wonders if conservatives might now "discover the importance of rebuilding the pillars of public morality on which this nation was founded -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"