David Vitter watch, day 2137, give or take

Today is a great day in the annals (two Ns, so shut up!) of Republican lying adulterers. Mark Sanford (R-only a sin to be a Democrat) will never again be seriously challenged by a Democratic candidate.

According to those exit polls, Mr. Sanford held a three-to-one lead among voters who described themselves as liars, cheaters, or sleazebags.

Once again, the majority of a conservative electorate has proven more committed to ideology than to the personal virtue they bullshit about whenever Ted Kennedy is the topic of conversation.

No big loss, really. Colbert Busch was never going to hold that seat past 2014. Now the Republicans are stuck with Sanford.

Maybe he, Vitter, and their role model, Newt Gingrich, should rent a limo with the up-suspension package and triple date. Oh, the stories they could tell to entertain their dates!

Days of our lives

Sarah Palin, stop her before she tweets again.

Sheila Jackson Lee dares to use a cell phone in search of the truth, how scandalous!

Mark Sanford, lonely heart in the guv'nah's mansion.

Regina Benjamin has had the temerity to advise Burger King to make their menu healthier. For pay, ZOMG!!!11!

Microscopic scrutiny of inconsequential events while giving the short shrift to momentous decisions is why we as a society and a set of political ideals are doomed.

Remorse by the numbers

Waiting for David Vitter...

Click image for full Dan Wasserman/Boston Globe cartoon.

Bumper crop

Because I don't have time or energy to comment (today) on the Charlie Baker announcement, a cartoon...

Click image for full Bruce Beattie/Daytona Beach News-Journal cartoon.

Millions for slot machines, not a penny for tribute

Bill Bennett is betting on a GOP without Mark Sanford. But he ought to know how strong the conservative culture of self-forgiveness is.

Editorial decision

This doesn't happen by accident. Someone in a management position at CNN decided that this bullshit story quoting Dick Cheney as liking Republicans (how novel!) deserves to float to the top of the ticker for the second day in a row. Also, as someone in the now-deleted comments observed, why would anyone quote from the Washington Times, which is even more a wingnut propaganda outfit than Fox?

Darth does get off one unforgettable line:

"I think that it's just a matter of time before the party begins to sort of firm up around a few key individuals, and we'll hear big things from them in the future," Cheney said.

And here I thought firming up around key individuals was the problem that Ensign and Sanford had.

David Vitter watch, day 717

The response of conservatives to sexual misconduct in their leaders is objectively pro-hypocrisy:

[W]hile Vitter, Ensign, Gingrich and perhaps Sanford have been able to retain their positions and political viability, the same cannot be said for the most recent offenders on the progressive side. Neither Eliot Spitzer nor John Edwards, each among the most promising figures in the Democratic Party, will ever be a candidate for public office again, although their misbehavior was no worse than what their Republican counterparts did.

Not to mention, pro-adultery.

Lip service

"Hey, baby, how about a little hanky-panky, followed by a traditional marriage?"

Click image for full Mike Keefe/Denver Post cartoon.

Acting like adults about adultery

Mark Sanford, politically, has made news for some truly great silliness. All his posturing about whether he would accept federal stimulus funding cravenly played to all that's most misanthropic and uneducable in the Republican base. It did get him a lot of national attention from a media that is dying to anoint the next conservative saint.

Now, of course, Sanford is making tremendous gobbets of tabloid news for his disappearance into a love affair. The only reason any of that matters should be the disappearance, not the affair. He did fail to discharge his duties for a week, but lots of people cheat, and we really cannot afford to have all of them resign their positions of responsibility, even if they've been exposed as arrant hypocrites. (Hey, they're Republicans. Hey, they're politicians.)

Fred Thompson, with his own checkered romantic past, belabors Sanford in the great mosh pit of American sexual politics:

I don’t have any sympathy in a situation where you’ve got a wife and four fairly young kids . . . don’t play it out in public.

Lots of others are shocked, shocked that Sanford would betray his wife. More than anything, they're shocked that he would betray them - or, if Democrats, shocked and delighted at the opportunity to kill off a rival. For the Republicans, it still mostly seems to be about the sex:

One county GOP leader said the governor “talked about how our leaders have stepped away from our core values, and said one thing on the campaign trail or out in the public and did something different in the background.’’

As time passes, we will again find out that some of those calling loudest for Sanford's resignation are even now conducting their own affairs. We could do without this hypocrisy by letting even politicians have a private life with - or, in this case, possibly without - their families.

Update (6/28): I've been corrected on this with a reminder that Sanford himself campaigned on family values, which makes the GOP leader quoted above correct. There does have to be accountability for hypocrisy on all sides.

Drama queen

Mark Sanford (R-SC) will take stimulus money after all, but he does not have to be happy about it. He just wants the federal government to leave him the hell alone - just as long as he gets on TV being left alone.

This is possibly the dumbest thing yet said by an elected official about the stimulus:

The stimulus "may or may not work," Sanford continued. "But wouldn't it make sense if it doesn't work to take 10 percent of that to pay down debt so that our finances are in stronger order, so that if it doesn't work, and if the storm is still raging 24 months from now, we're in a stronger financial position to spend more, to issue more debt, to do a whole host of things that would help people at the state level?"

Pretty much, I'm going to save my raincoat in case it's still raining in 2 years, so that then I can keep myself dry!

Frank Morgan, the schools superintendent in rural Kershaw County, likened Sanford's proposal to spend stimulus money to pay down debt to "trying to pay off your mortgage while your kids are starving."

Not even the cow catcher

Republican DNA has two deleterious traits:

• Utter faith in the so-called free market to solve every problem they care about
• An eagerness for other people to suffer so that they'll become as virtuous as the wealthy (yeah, no shit!)
  

These are people who will still baldly assert despite the locomotive sounds and the dopplered train whistle that the oncoming 4:00 a.m. express is really the light at the end of the tunnel, right up to the moment its impact liquefies their (useless) cerebral cortexes.

John McCain wants a stimulus that's half the already too small size of the Obama stimulus and 50% useless tax cuts to boot. Yep, just one more proof that he was (briefly) honest when he admitted knowing nothing about economics.

We're at risk here. Our kids are going to pay the bill either way, thanks to the Bushist borrow and spend policies. Would they be better off with a revitalized economy or with one coming out of depression?

To me, the answer couldn't be more obvious. But Republicans love to tell us how much better we'll be as people if we get back to basics - like lower wages, less leisure, and gratitude to them for reducing us to penury.