In about a week, South Carolina will pick between Mark Sanford and Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

As we all know, when Mark Sanford was governor of South Carolina, he vanished for a week — after telling staff he was off hiking the Appalachian Trail, a lie they repeated to the press.  He had actually used his official plane to fly off for a visit with his “soul mate” mistress in Argentina.  As someone who remembers Rudy Giuliani’s nasty divorce announcement, which was made more painful to watch as his then wife’s interview where she said they were “trying to work things out” was preempted by his announcement that he had just served her with divorce papers.  Ouch.  So watching Sanford tell the press, presumably before he told his wife, that his mistress was his soul mate seemed more mean than anything.  To his credit after divorcing his wife he married his real soul mate and I really mean it when I say I wish them the best.I do.

That doesn’t mean he belongs in Congress.  To be fair, I would also prefer to never see a mention of John Edwards again.  For the record, I worked for him several times and am still bitter about it.  Again, his affair was only the beginning of his douchiness.   I mean the affair was the start but then he dragged out the process of denying the paternity of his child so long that it felt like my soul was being slowly pulled out through my nose.

So Sanford’s affair isn’t my problem.  That he voted to impeach President Clinton is part of it (the hypocrisy).  That he saw no problem lying to his constituents and using state funds for personal purposes is my real issue with him.  That he sees no contradiction in how he has judged people and how he has acted bothers me. Falling in love with someone who is not your spouse is not a crime, it happens.  It sucks for the other person but it happens.

But I remain confused about something.  David Vitter broke the the law by frequenting prostitutes in Washington, DC and Louisiana.  The only thing that kept him from being prosecuted was the statute of limitations had run out.  Where is he today?  The US Senate and his name is being floated as a possible gubernatorial candidate.  John Ensign had an affair with a staffer and tried to pay her and her husband to keep in quiet and he is also still in the Senate.

Anthony Weiner did something incredibly stupid when he tweeted photos of himself but he broke no laws and his wife is still with him.  Why  is his comeback so far fetched if Sanford’s can be deemed realistic?  I know President Clinton recovered politically from his indiscretion but there still seems to be a double standard.  The party of “family values” seems all too willing to forgive each other when they cheat and lie but hold Democrats to a higher standard and I don’t get it.

I hope South Carolina bucks that trend and sends Elizabeth Colbert Busch to Congress.  We need more women there anyway.

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I kind of owe Mark Sanford. The scandal that led him to assume the role of poor, dumb, love-struck Paris, willing to bring war to Troy’s gates in the name of forbidden desire, was the jumping off point for what I think is the best piece ever to be published over at my little corner of the internet. What I wrote was personal and undeniably nihilistic, a treatise on my own beliefs about love and loss as I desperately tried to navigate the darkness in the period immediately following the devastating break-up with my wife at the time, and I kind of have Sanford’s indiscretion to thank for it. Now Sanford has given me another reason to throw a sincere thank-you in his direction — and it has to do with his apparent redemption in the wake of that initial scandal. It all comes full circle, I suppose.

As you probably know by now, Sanford won Tuesday’s Republican primary run-off in South Carolina’s 1st District, making him the guy who’ll go up against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch — sister of Stephen Colbert — in the general election. The prize is a seat in the U.S. House. Sanford faces a tough challenge in Colbert Busch, but regardless of the outcome of that race he’s already won a huge victory by proving that just three-and-a-half years after an ugly PR catastrophe that should have, for all intents and purposes, put a tombstone over his political career, enough voters are willing to forgive him that he’s one step away from being a United States Representative. Just a decade or so ago it would’ve been impossible to imagine him clawing his way back into the good graces of the public in such a short amount of time and with so little discernible effort, and yet here he is now — his transformation from cynical, reptilian liar and philanderer to mildly respectable public servant just about complete in the eyes of quite a few.

For a long time now I’ve been saying this and, thanks to Sanford, I feel like I’m getting a very nice little shot of pure validation at the moment: scandals don’t last anymore. Yes, it’s possible to do something so heinous that it ruins your position in politics, pop culture, or polite society in general and makes you essentially radioactive, but the number of sins that cause that kind of far-reaching damage is dwindling. It’s not simply because as a people we’ve become desensitized to scandal — although that’s certainly true — but also because our rapid-fire media culture now ensures that we don’t stay fixated on one incident for very long, no matter how titillating. News cycles turn over in 24 hours. Social networking has shortened our attention spans to 140 characters. We descend on something in seconds, turn it into an inescapable meme, then move on to the next shiny thing that catches our attention. We can be thoroughly immersed in a news item that outrages us, makes us cheer, makes us laugh or cry, and so on — and have completely forgotten about that item a couple of days later in favor of something else. Monty Python’s newscaster deadpanning, “And now for something completely different,” has never seemed more prescient.

When Anthony Weiner accidentally tweeted pictures of his dick to the entire country two years ago, and was busted for doing so, there were immediate calls for him to resign. The media beat the hell out of the story, no pun intended. Everyone was paying attention. But at the time, I wrote that Weiner could easily survive the scandal and keep his House seat; all he had to do was lay low for a while and wait. In time, and not very much time either, the hungry piranha that were feasting on him would be distracted by another large animal that had inadvertently wandered into the water and they’d move on to that. Then, in keeping with the now-perfectly predictable cycle of new media sensationalism, he could emerge contrite, humbly seeking a measure of redemption and being able to point to all the incredible things he had continued to do for the people he served, even as his life was crumbling around him. Weiner’s only mistake in the wake of his personal PR disaster was walking away. He didn’t have to.

Mark Sanford is living, breathing proof of that. Sure, he lost his political career briefly and faced ethics fines, but what he did was far worse than what Weiner did and yet his “comeback” has taken just three-and-a-half years. It’s like the producers of Spider-man rebooted him. There’s no denying that a good portion of Sanford’s quick return is owed to his own mind-boggling arrogance. Not only did he have the balls to believe — correctly, it turned out — that he was so publicly likable and so good at his job that most people would overlook the fact that he was a piece of shit in his personal life, but he also asked his now-ex-wife Jenny, the once-scorned woman, to help run his campaign. He invoked and thanked Jesus, of course, after his Tuesday victory, saying that he’s received “God’s grace” and is a testament to the impact that it’s had on his life and “in so many lives across this state and across this nation.”

If all of this sounds like the height of narcissism and cynicism, it almost certainly is. But it’s possible due not to Sanford but to us and the way we’re now shaped by the media. Admittedly, Republican voters — definitely ones in South Carolina — are willing to swallow the typically bitter pill of forgiveness because it’s generally in their DNA as Christians. It remains to be seen whether Sanford’s act will fly with an audience that isn’t quite as predisposed to be both friendly and easily dupable. Still, Sanford shouldn’t even be in the position he’s in right now — and yet here he is.

Of course the flip side of the mercurial nation our hyper-connected media culture has created is that Mark Sanford can once again be out of the public eye as quickly as he returned to it.

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My mother has told me a joke she heard from someone when she went to South Carolina.  The SC resident and native told her, “South Carolina; too small to be its own country, too big to be a mental institution.”  I have spent some time in the Palmetto State and like it a lot but you have to admit, they have a way — at least with their politics — of making themselves look more than a little loopy.

Yesterday was no exception.  Remember former SC Governor Mark Sanford (R)?  In 2009, he told his staff he was off to hike the Appalachian trail but in reality he had taken the state plane down to Argentina to see his mistress.  He made his situation a bit worse when he went on TV and called the woman his “soul mate.”  His wife wasn’t too happy about that claim so she left him and he ended up resigning.

Last night, Sanford’s political comeback, in the form of a campaign for the state’s first Congressional district, gained some steam as he received 37 percent of the vote in the GOP primary.  He will now face a run off election on April 2nd as soon as the state figures out who the runner up is.   The winner of the run off will face Stephen Colbert’s sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

My problem with Republicans who commit adultery is not the act itself, it s the hypocrisy of it.  My party isn’t any more faithful to their wives than the GOP, we just don’t wrap ourselves in a whole lot of clap trap about “family values.”  And for the record, I worked for John Edwards (2003, 2004, 2007) and his exploits broke my heart so no, I don’t think they are any better.  (I also don’t think all SC politicians are bad – Senator Lindsay Graham has been remarkably rational, though I cannot say I think the same of former Senator Jim DeMint — read his greatest hits of craziness here.)

Oh, SC. This was only four years ago.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM:

Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert is the most popular choice among South Carolina voters to replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint (R), according to a new poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling. DeMint is leaving the Senate to lead the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation in January.

Colbert is the choice of 20 percent of registered South Carolina voters polled, Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) sees 15 percent of the total, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) merits 14 percent and former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford is fourth with 11 percent. The rest of the field is in single digits. Twenty-two percent of Republicans desire Scott, and 21 percent of the GOP wants Gowdy. But the rest of the electorate is pro-Colbert.

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Grover Norquist: Not so powerful anymore.

Are we finally seeing a ray of light for the future of the Republican Party? From the Guardian:

Senator Lindsey Graham has become the second senior Republican in days to publicly disavow a pledge that handcuffs the party to a policy of no tax rises, raising hopes of a deal over the fiscal cliff.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week, the South Carolina politician said that the only pledge members of either party should make would be one to make sure the country did not go the same way, economically, as Greece. Regarding a pledge against tax hikes that has been signed by most Republicans in Congress – having been promulgated by the conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist – Graham said: “I will violate this pledge, long story short, for the good of the country.”

In the aftermath of the GOP’s defeat in the presidential election of 6 November, Norquist is increasingly seeing his influence on the party decline. On Thursday, senator Saxby Chambliss said he would break the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in an attempt to help avert the automatic triggering of $600bn of spending cuts and tax increases, the so-called “fiscal cliff”.

This act of defiance by two prominent Republicans may seem like a small thing, but given they are confronting 30 years of ideological rigidity, Graham and Chambliss should be given a great deal or respect. It’s going to take many more Republicans coming out of the wood work and telling purists like Norquist to disappear, but every movement starts with one act of bravery, and it looks like we could be seeing the start of one.

It is too early to know whether this will have any effect, but if other Republicans start to challenge the insane orthodoxy that taxes cannot be raised under any circumstance, it may seep into the mainstream of their current ideological platform.

And after that? Who knows? They may even start accepting that climate change is real….

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South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Bob Cesca: Arizona has been such a hotbed of wingnuttery and ignorance lately that it’s easy to forget about the almost-as-backwards-and-ridiculous state of South Carolina.

The home of legal firecrackers and the abundantly racist tourist trap called South of the Border has been the reigning super-champion of right-wing demagoguery and radicalism almost since the formation of the country. Toss in its status as the first nation to secede from the United States and the state that re-elected Strom Thurmond to a gajillion consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate, then multiply Mark Sanford’s hike on “the Appalachian Trail,” then throw in their new Jim Crow style Voter ID law, then add in a dash of this guy and you might have a partial view of how wacky South Carolina really is.

As a replacement for Mark Sanford, South Carolinians elected Nikki Haley, a very ethnic choice considering the state’s penchant for whites-only segregation (Strom Thurmond, its decades-long senator, famously filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 — the longest standing filibuster in American history). Even though she was born into the Sikh religion, there aren’t any witch hunts or demands for birth certificates proving her South Carolina heritage — interesting how that works when Republicans have unusual ethnic and religious background versus African American Democrats born in Hawaii.

But it turns out that Haley isn’t just a demagogue against illegal immigrants, she also doesn’t care much for the state’s female population.

Naturally, she endorsed the controversial policy of state-mandated government ultrasounds for women who choose to have an abortion. She also voted for the Penalties for Harming an Unborn Child/Fetus law, which, in some cases, could criminalize women who suffer from miscarriages if no specific cause provides a legitimate reason for the natural termination of the pregnancy.

And several days ago, Haley did this:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) vetoed nearly half a million dollars that was slated to go toward domestic violence and sexual assault prevention. Haley defended the veto, according to the Charleston City Paper, saying that rape and sexual assault prevention programs “distract from” the Department of Health’s mission, and that sexual assault victims are “only a small portion” of South Carolinians who need help.

Not to be overly alarmist about this, but did she seriously accompany her veto of a sexual assault prevention bill by saying that rapes and assaults against women are a “distraction?” Wow. That’s staggering, especially given the state’s above average record on sexual violence. South Carolina also has the seventh highest rate of female murders at the hands of men in the nation. Seventh. This is somehow a “distraction” from the real issues.

Seriously, too many southern states are rapidly returning to pre-Civil Rights, pre-gender equality status. And they’re doing it successfully without much push-back. In South Carolina, a woman with immigrant parents is actually facilitating it. Now that’s how screwy South Carolina really is.

But by way of a post script, there’s a South Carolina Republican who’s actually doing the right thing by breaking with the GOP groupthink on the climate crisis. Former Congressman Bob Inglis is spearheading the “Energy and Enterprise Initiative” which will, according to the National Journal, “push one policy: a new tax on carbon pollution or gasoline consumption, paired with a cut in the income or payroll tax, creating a revenue-neutral, market-driven solution to an environmental problem while cutting taxes that conservatives dislike.” I don’t like the second part, since I strongly believe the payroll tax should be expanded to include the full income of Americans earning more than the current income cap of around $102,000 — perhaps exclusively, while exempting workers earning less than that amount. It would keep Social Security solvent for decades beyond the 2040 mark. So whenever I hear about another more than temporary payroll tax reductions, I worry that perhaps it’s a means of sabotaging the program. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to see a Republican — especially a South Carolina Republican — take on the climate crisis in a serious way.

Perhaps, after all, there might be some hope.

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Gingrich has won only two primaries since January. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is expected to suspend his campaign next week and endorse Mitt Romney, his spokesman has said. Mr Gingrich now says he expects Mr Romney, who won five primaries on Tuesday, to be the Republican nominee.

The campaigns are said to be working out an orderly endorsement, with Mr Romney keen on Mr Gingrich’s support. He has won only two primaries – South Carolina and Georgia – since the election season began in January. The Gingrich campaign had indicated it would reassess its future if he did not win the contest in Delaware. Mr Gingrich will reportedly hold his last campaign event on 1 May in Washington DC.

During a campaign stop in North Carolina on Wednesday, Mr Gingrich all but conceded.

“You have to at some point be honest about what’s happening in the real world as opposed to what you would like to have happened,” Mr Gingrich told supporters.

“I don’t think we can lose by 30 points in Delaware and feel good about it”

He added that Mr Romney “had a very good day yesterday. You have to give him some credit.”

The former House Speaker said he would continue to campaign for the next week as a “citizen”, adding he would discuss economic issues, such as high unemployment.

“We are going to stay very, very active and we are working out the details of our transition,” Mr Gingrich said. “But I am committed to this party. I am committed to defeating Obama.”

Read more at the BBC…

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Gary Younge points out in an article in the Guardian that money pretty much determines the outcome of any given election in America.

Newt Gingrich found this hard truth out last night in Florida, as his multi millionaire rival Mitt Romney resoundingly thumped him by an almost 15% margin. Romney outspent Gingrich 4-1 on ads in the sunshine state, knowing he needed a solid performance to get back into pole position.

Gingrich had a good run in South Carolina, and it almost looked like he could pull off an upset. But the former Speaker let the momentum get to his head and stumbled in the debates thereafter. Amazingly he let Romney, a terrible debater, outperform him in the lead up to Florida effectively sealing the fate of primary.

Can Gingrich come back?

It's anyone's guess, but he will have a hard time halting Romney's momentum and support from the party. You have to give it to Gingrich – he'll fight all the way (as his fiery speech indicated), but he is facing the harsh reality that his rival can simply outspend him until he drops.

We've still got weeks of this stuff to go, and it keeps getting more and more entertaining.

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I've been saying consistently the Mitt Romney is a sure bet for the Republican nomination. After Newt Gingrich's dominating performance in South Carolina this weekend, I'm now not so sure.

Romney has a very, very serious problem on his hands as Gingrich's portrayal of him as an out of touch elite is resonating with voters in a big way. The numbers are looking increasingly worse for Romney with the analysis showing voters believe Gingrich is better equipped to beat Obama in the general (voters favored Gingrich over Romney by a 14-point margin, 51-37 percent).

Amazingly, as loathsome as Gingrich is, he is actually turning out to be the charismatic candidate – an amazing feat that underlines just how weak the GOP field is.

Gingrich is playing to the Conservative base using the Southern strategy (thinly veiled racism) at every turn. He refers to Obama as the 'foodstamp' President and a radical. Gingrich will run an 'American' campaign as opposed to Obama's 'foreign' one. It's a role he is entirely comfortable playing, and one that Romney can never adopt successfully. As Bob Cesca writes:

This grueling primary may not end anytime soon if other southern states continue to be as receptive to Newt Gingrich’s howling as South Carolina was. Mitt Romney may adopt the same strategy, however it won’t come off as genuine to those on the left, right, or middle. It’s already well-established that Newt Gingrich is a raging prick, but Mitt Romney simply isn’t believable.

The Democrats will be positively giddy with excitement at the prospect of Gingrich winning the nomination. General elections are won by taking the center, and Gingrich simply won't be able to appeal to swing voters like Romney can. Gingrich may be able to fire up the Reagan conservatives, but his militancy on foreign policy and economics isolates him from moderates. To boot, his questionable moral character has the religious Right feeling uneasy and they might not come out in force either. In short, Gingrich is too controversial to win the general election, and the GOP knows it and so do the Democrats.

The problem is, Republican voters don't, and they may just propel Gingrich onto the national stage where he will be humiliated by the President.

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I met up with my friend and fellow blogger Oliver Willis yesterday, and he came up with a brilliant take on Mitt Romney: He is the Republican John Kerry.

In 2004, John Kerry tried his best to connect with everyday voters, but his aloofness and upper class vernacular made it extremely difficult for him to appear like a normal human being. The Bush campaign effectively painted him as an out of touch, patrician elitist who spent most of his time windsurfing and speaking French.

Romney, a long time politician and multi millionaire is now suffering from the same attacks (and amazingly from his own party). The second time Presidential candidate only has himself to blame though. From the Guardian:

Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney highlighted the gap between himself and average Americans on Tuesday when he maintained he did not make "very much" from speaking fees, even though the $370,000 earned in a single year would be considered a fortune by many middle-class Americans.

His comments came at a press conference while out campaigning in South Carolina ahead of its potentially decisive primary on Saturday. Romney is the favourite to win in South Carolina, enjoying a double-digit poll lead over his nearest rival, former speaker Newt Gingrich.

At the press conference in Florence, he disclosed that he pays a tax rate of only 15% in spite of having an estimated wealth of $200m.

Not exactly the type of statements you want to be making as the country slides into another possible recession and 49 million Americans don't have enough to eat.

I've been spending a lot of time slamming Mitt Romney while ignoring the other candidates mainly because he's quite clearly going to win, but also because he makes it so damn easy.

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