Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who resigned after having an affair with an Argentine woman after mysteriously disappearing from office for a few days, won back his old congressional seat in a landslide race against Stephen Colbert’s sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch.
This caused the media to go into DEFCON 1.
First on deck is Mother Jones, who connects Sanford’s win to the Koch brothers, two wealthy libertarian donors who are painted as evil in liberal media (even in movies like The Campaign).
How does it make this connection? Linking his donation from a $250,000 donation by Independent Women’s Voice, a nonprofit that is the sister company to Independent Women’s Forum, which had a VP in 2004 that was a former Koch Industries lobbyist. Also, the IWV received a donation once from the Center to Protect Patient Rights, a “money conduit for conservative nonprofits run by Koch operative Sean Noble,” who once spoke at an event with other Koch-connected employees.
Regular Nancy Drews, Mother Jones is. One more degree of separation and they would’ve uncovered Kevin Bacon.
Next is CBS, who asks Sanford, “do you think voters put policy over character”? It’s always great to question someone’s character but not have the balls to do it directly and instead rely on leading questions to do the job.
And then Matt Lauer takes it a step further, asking Sanford, “Is it possible that the voters just voted for you so they could be part of a redemption story?” You might as well ask Obama, “is it possible that the voters just voted for you so they could be part of electing the first black president?” But of course Lauer wouldn’t ask that.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/347702/sanford-culture
And then there’s the whole issue of moral relativity.
Jonah Goldberg says:
[b]ut one thing I really resent is the tendency of liberals to demand that conservatives stick to standards that liberals reject entirely. If you have no brief against the Clintons, the Weiners, the Spitzers, or the Kennedys please don’t pretend you’re offended by the Sanfords.
And it’s absolutely true. The Sanford story was small potatoes in comparison, and a hell of a lot less creepy than fucking an intern with a cigar, sending naked pics over Twitter, and paying a hooker. It was a dude who fell in love with another woman, which is more than can be said for the other lechers. And while it’s not removing moral culpability for what Sanford did (it’s still infidelity), it really does throw a wrench in the argument of liberals who say after Democrat scandals, “[w]hy can’t you conservatives lighten up? Who are you to judge?” As Goldberg says, “[i]t is only when conservatives are caught in such messes, that liberals walk over to the conservative side, pick up our standards, and beat us up with them.”
So congrats to Sanford. He won a race most people thought he would lose and is with a woman who he’s happy with. His wife is seen as an angel in the state for leaving him and refusing to help with his campaign. When this scandal first broke, I never would’ve guessed this would be the result. But it just goes to show that, in politics, anything is possible. And the one constant is a disingenuous, concern-trolling slanted media.
