"Pro-life" Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA-18) urged mistress to get an abortion

[Virginiá]

Ultimately if people hold conservative or liberal beliefs the hypocrisy or moral failings of a candidate are irrelevant, so long as the votes back up their preferences. It is not wrong for a conservative to prefer keeping Murphy vs electing a Democrat.

Well, if you don't want to factor in the idea of integrity, dignity, and so on, one could easily take this kind of hypocrisy (and what he said about his staffers writing the pro-life stuff) as a signal that he is not committed to those views, and whatever his current votes have been, he might not be dependable for anti-abortion legislation. Ditto for other stuff he says.

I think 2016 of all elections showed what happens when a politician becomes viewed as very untrustworthy. Not to say that it would play out the same for a candidate in a House race (they don't get nearly as much attention, obviously), but trust still matters.

[Virginiá]

While I don't agree with ExtremeConservative's views, by saying that a Republican is better than a pro-life Dem, he's confirming that he's not a single-issue voter, so I'll give him that much.

Here's a question for ExtremeConservative: in the unlikely event there is a race between a pro-choice R and a pro-life D, who would you pick?

Before you ask, I would pick the D, because abortion isn't one of the most important issues to me.

I guess I could have missed something here, but are you referencing this post?:

Honestly, his quotes on the issue in the alleged texts to his mistress make this situation worse than the DesJarlais situation (you may remember that I was a huge Starrett supporter in the primary) because he pretty much said that he isn't pro-life and doesn't want his social media supporting pro-life ideas.  I absolutely want him primaried, but he would still be marginally better than a liberal, pro-abortion Democrat.

He said even a hypocritical + alleged pro-life Republican like DesJarlais is better than a liberal pro-abortion Democrat. If anything, he affirmed his status as a single issue voter.

In fact, to your question, I wouldn't be surprised if he would vote for a pro-choice Republican over a pro-life Democrat under the assumption that party leadership might force the pro-choice Republican to vote party-line on abortion stuff, and vice versa for the Democrat. Of course it doesn't always work like that irl but I don't think I've ever seen anyone as devoted to a single issue as ExtremeConservative. Every choice political choice he makes seems to be ultimately influenced by abortion.