Politicians and Adultery (Mark Sanford)

[psimmond]

Singalphile wrote: To vote for someone like this in our government, it seems like one could either say A) "I don't care at all about a congressman's morals or "personal" judgement; I just vote for the person who has a history of voting closest to what I prefer." or B) "I care about morals and judgment, but habitual adultery (not a one-time mistake), misuse of state funds, the cover-up (all while in office) doesn't rise to the level of inexcusable behavior for a congressman."

You left out this one:

C) I care about morals and judgment but that really has no bearing on how I vote. I always vote Democrat (or Republican), just like my daddy and my granddaddy before him!

Thankfully C represents the smallest segment of the electorate followed by A or B. I fall under B; I care about morals and judgment and carefully consider whether or not a candidate's past actions disqualify them from serving and/or receiving my vote. I don't know whether or not I could have brought myself to vote for this guy.

I will say that that if I had to choose between 2 candidates--one who had an abortion, thinks it was perfectly fine to destroy her child, and fights to ensure all women can choose to do the same and one who had an affair funded by taxpayers and lied about it, I'd vote for the second person (all other factors being equal). BTW, I'm not saying this is true of Sanford's Democrat opponent; I'm just bringing it up as a hypothetical.

[Singalphile]

I have to reluctantly agree that your scenario would be a really tough call.

... and you're probably right about group C, too.

I guess I'm more distraught that this fellow made it out of the primaries. But maybe there's more to it than I know.

[Singalphile]

You may recall that politician Anthony Weiner resigned from the US congress in mid-2011 b/c of a similar scandal. Well, he's now running for NYC mayor.

The wikipedia page says he has a "100% rating from the NARAL Pro-Choice America in 2003 and a 0% rating from National Right to Life Committee 2006."

One could oppose him based on his record, but a supporter of Sanford just has to keep his mouth shut about Weiner's similar behavior.

Weiner must surely have been encouraged by the election of Sanford.

Oh well.

(I really don't follow politics. I just see these headlines on the Drudge Report.)