The nation proved it didn't care about "character." I had a catharsis in 1992. I realized that we should care about character, even if the rest of the nation didn't, but not to the exclusion of more important things, like survival.
I suppose I became a realist, and I still resent the nation for teaching me the lesson that "character doesn't really matter to winning power."
Rush could never figure out how liberals could cozy up and defend a person like Clinton.
I couldn't either, but I realized what they care about is winning and imposing *THEIR* preferences (I won't say "morality", because they are *NOT* moral.) on the rest of us.
What we have done with the "character" issue is let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
I see the need for a nasty street fighter, not a knight in shining armor. While I would prefer a knight, you fight with whatever weapon you can lay to hand.
But once the character issues started becoming more common in the conservative wing, landing a character punch to a democrats jaw became more difficult and conservatives without character became embraced.
The media-lie-machine was never going to allow you to land a "character" punch on any of their perverts. It wasn't going to happen until mass communications was taken over and it's power turned back against them.
So style over substance.