More Republican Vice

The governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, just up and disappeared for six days. No one could find him. Foul play was suspected. Then he turned up. He said he was getting away from it all by hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Then the story changed. He said he was in Argentina. Now we know that he was in Argentina having an extramarital affair. Another Republican supporter of family values is caught not having any. Adultery compounded by hypocrisy. Add to those moral transgressions a complete lack of discretion or common sense. He thought the governor of a state could vanish for six days and no one would look into the matter? I suppose Republicans will need to clean house of their corrupt members before they can be taken seriously as a party worthy of governing. Although I hasten to say that one can believe in moral absolutes without living by them, as none of us can fully, this being something the world cannot understand. The governor sounds repentant. But that doesn’t take away from the consequences of what he has done.

This follows hot on the heels of another Republican, Nevada Senator John Ensign, getting caught having an affair with a staffer. Melissa Clouthier says this about the vices of Republicans:

Because family values matter to conservatives and Republicans, any deviance from said values indicates the greatest sin of all (but only if you’re a Republican): hypocrisy.

The moral of the Ensign story, if you’re a Democrat, leftist, or mainstream media organization (but that’s redundant), is to have no morals. If one has no morals, one can have no shame and can never be a hypocrite. An amoral person can also, without shame, point to other people’s failings because they do have morals and inevitably violate them, and so are hypocrites because they believe in right and wrong. And when people who pursue morality do something immoral, well, it should be pointed out that they’re wrong and that they’re hypocrites.