Wig.
PD,
I agree with you, if I understand you correctly, on not holding people to their political positions from decades ago. Even some of the guys that used to be NAZI's aren't anymore. I'm not being facetious. Times change. People change.
I think we should be careful to hold people in both parties to the same standards. If we're truly interested in making such statements on the basis of such lofty and noble standards of equality we should make them equally both against people in "our parties" but also in the other. It's quite evident that whenever a Democrat makes such a statement the Republicans by and large jump down their throat and vice versa.
Members of each party can go back and forth trying to discredit the other based upon their best guesses of what the person's intent is. Seems to me that people often think the members of their own party are more honest, moral, and ethical than those of the other. Cloudy vision results from such nonsense.