IOKIYAR is an acronym which stands for It's OK If You're A Republican, referring to allegations of hypocritical behavior by powerful members of the Republican party. For example, a Republican-led commission may grill a Democratic official for days about an alleged ethics violation, but spend only a few hours questioning a Republican official for a similar ethics complaint. The idea is that unethical or illegal behavior by the ruling party is protected by an unspoken IOKIYAR mentality.

One example of IOKIYAR in action concerned the impeachment proceedings brought against former president Bill Clinton, an influential member of the Democratic party. The accusations included an extramarital affair with a subordinate employee, lying under oath and obstruction of justice. The impeachment effort, which many believed was orchestrated by conservative Republican opponents of Clinton, ultimately failed, but it did expose other examples of political wrongdoing.

Many of the same Republican leaders who led the charge against Clinton on moral and ethical grounds were later proven to have committed similar personal and professional acts. Former Republican representative Newt Gingrich, for example, admitted to having an extramarital affair at the same time he publicly condemned Clinton for the Lewinsky affair. Other Republican officials were named as clients of prostitution rings or outed as homosexuals during this same time period. This apparent hypocrisy gave rise to the derisive acronym IOKIYAR, used primarily by Democratic political pundits and bloggers.

One of the underlying causes of the IOKIYAR phenomenon is the close association between religious conservatism and the Republican party as a whole. Many Republican candidates were elected based on their strong ties to Christianity and the moral and ethical behavior it suggests. Republican leaders who loudly and publicly denounce a Democratic politician's unethical or immoral behavior often cite their own religious leanings as evidence of their own propriety. Under the IOKIYAR philosophy, a conservative Republican caught in a moral or ethical scandal can justify his or her behavior more readily than a liberal Democrat possibly could.

Obviously, if a shift in political power should occur and the Democratic party found itself in control of both Congress and the White House, a new acronym of IOKIYAD could start to appear on political blogs soon afterward. The essential idea of IOKIYAR is that hypocritical or morally questionable behavior, such as the arrest of Republican Senator Larry Craig for soliciting gay sex, could be downplayed successfully by the ruling Republican party even as Democratic politicians are vilified for lesser offenses or peccadilloes.