Sanford.  Honestly, I don’t care if he cheated on his wife.  I don’t care that he flew down to Argentina for a romantic tryst.   Argentina is a beautiful country, and so are Argentinian women.  As for using taxpayer money to make his trip, I’m not a resident of South Carolina, so it’s not like I paid for it.  Hell, it’s not even like I voted for the man.  Furthermore, I am not sure that he did use taxpayer money.   I admit that it shows a lot of bad judgment on his part, to go A.W.O.L. as a governor, but in the end, it’s not for me to tell him to resign.  It’s for the people of South Carolina.

The same holds true for Senator Ensign.  He’s Nevada’s problem.  If Ted Kennedy has been in Congress for as long as he has after drunk-driving a girl into a lake to drown, I don’t see why all the fuss over Ensign and Sanford.  The folk of Massachussets keep electing Kennedy.  The folk of S.C. can re-elect Sanford.  Plus, it wasn’t that long ago that a president committed perjury to cover up his oval office oral sexcapade.  Most of the nation let him slide…

Look, politicians are slime.  Almost all of them.  What’s more, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Politicians have always been slime, but the degree to which those in Washington wield uninhibited power today is disgraceful.  It could not happen if we did not allow it, but we did.  We do.

The way to fix things is not by focusing on a new Republican presidential candidate nor by harranguing the Sanfords, Delays, and Ensigns of the country.  The path toward a revitalized republic is through the local.  We the people have given away so much local and state power to the federal government, that those who allegedly represent us at the highest levels are now just a freak show.  They are too far away from us!  If you really want to wipe the stains off the Constitution and make this a freer nation again, you have to start at home.  Leave Sanford to South Carolina, and focus on your own locality.  Demand representatives who fight to reclaim power at the local level, fight for it yourself.  Keep the slime as close under your eye as you can.

Sanford at least had the right idea when it came to resisting the increase of federal at the expense of local power, because he felt (if not still feels) that it goes against our federalist roots.  Now, his ideal is lost over a focus on adultery.  If South Carolinians want him gone, they can force him out, but I’d caution my neighbors against losing focus on the virtues that they elected him for in the first place.