lol: Adulterous Absconder Mark Sanford Announces He'll Be Challenging Trump or Something

Take a hike, mac.

Sanford declared his candidacy in a lengthy thread on Twitter, where he stated that he considers "our nation's debt, deficits, and spending" to be a major issue, and also accused the president having "ruled out action on the very things that drive spending and accumulated debt."

...

In the weeks leading up to Sanford making his decision to run against President Trump, the president mocked the former governor and the other two challengers by calling them the "Three Stooges," while also referring to Sanford as "Mr. Appalachian Trail." This was in reference to Sanford's affair, where he disappeared for a week in June of 2009 as he traveled to Argentina; while he was missing, one of his spokesmen claimed that the reason for his disappearance was that he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail."

Erick Erickson, who I refuse to link, if of course pretty keen on Sanford's candidacy. Erickson declares that because Sanford's "issues played out in public," that someone absolves him of them. He also says:

Sanford, like the President, has a dubious marital history, but the President’s team cannot really go after it. Should they try, Sanford should acknowledge it and say he suspects the nation would rather a President who might take a hike than take to Twitter.

I need the Holy Cons to render a firm and lasting opinion on this: are moral lapses objectively salient, or are they only salient to the extent an opponent can "go after it"? The later claim -- that an objective moral failing doesn't matter unless someone can run political ads about it -- is, what's the term the Holy Cons never weary of?, moral relativism.

Is this all "Moral Objectivism" actually is? Something to impose on people you oppose for political reasons, while offering moral relativism for people you like?

How is that any different than the liberal media's double standards?

More below:

And speaking of Moral Relativism, let's take a look back at a post from January. Jonah Goldberg had been in a particularly fierce virtue-signalling spasm, so I decided to look back and what he'd said about Mark Sanford's spectacularly public and flagrant adultery -- did this man said to "speak conservatism as a second language" impose a similarly Morally Objective standard on Sanford as the one he now claimed was absolutely necessary in the case of Trump?

Or did he offer some Moral Relativism in defense of Sanford?

Well you probably can guess the answer but let's check:

Flashback, 2013: Jonah Goldberg Argues That Because Democrats Rejected the "Cheat on Your Wife, Lose Your Political Office" Rule, That Means That Republicans Should Ignore It Too, and Vote for the Mark Sanford Despite Flagrant Adultery

Gee, that's weird. Because this same cuck has been screaming for the past three years that we should insist on the rule we pressed for in 1998 with Clinton, only to see that rule completely rejected by the public.

But here he was in 2013, arguing for a cuck more in sync with his cuck tendencies, saying a little bit of adultery shouldn't matter between Urban Cosmopolitan Sophisticates.

I'm going to quote as much as I damn well like because Jonah Goldberg is a plagiarist and there's no editor willing to correct this. So I guess we're like roommates who share a fridge now, taking out of it whatever we might need.

BTW: I don't disagree that of course we should have voted for the cuck Sanford over Stephen Colbert's sister for this House race.

But if we're not going to give away a House seat to show how Principled we are, how can someone claim we should give away a presidency?

And the three Supreme Court picks (minimum) we'll be getting out of it?

It's just weird to see Jonah Goldberg acknowledging that "the culture has changed," and that we don't live in a puritanical culture even if we might like to, and that sometimes practical considerations about who we want to have actual throw-you-in-jail power over us should enter into these moral debates.

He seems less willing to acknowledge these things now.

Sanford and the Culture

By JONAH GOLDBERG

May 8, 2013 1:45 PM

Let me say upfront: I would rather we lived in a society where adultery had a higher social cost. That’s not to say people shouldn’t be forgiving or that there should be no such thing as second chances. But ideally, I'd like it if things were less loosey-goosey. Cheat on your wife, and maybe you don’t get to run for public office anymore. Send junk-tweets to random young women who aren’t your wife? Well there goes your dream of becoming mayor. Exploit an intern whose name you can barely remember while you're the president of the United States, maybe your moral ranking should be downgraded to junk and you should quietly skulk off the public stage. Or, if that's too much to ask, maybe the interval between scandal and rehabilitation could last a little longer than the maturation time of a fruit fly. No politician is so indispensable that we just can’t do without him (or her), never mind for a little while.

But, here's a newsflash: We don't live in that country anymore. And any hope that we might be able to was not on the ballot in South Carolina yesterday. What was on the ballot was a choice between a woman who tried to dodge the fact she was a liberal running to advance the liberal agenda of the Democratic party and a conservative whose marriage fell apart because he fell in love with somebody else.

Wait, is he saying you should vote for someone with a sexually checkered past if he's running against a woman who is a liberal trying to advance the liberal agenda of the conservative party?

I'm confused! Because I thought in 2016 (and since then) he's been saying "Vote Democrat to stop the sex criminal Trump."

Oh wait, he hasn't been saying that, exactly. As Not Binary Ben says: It's not biiiiinary.

He sure has been implying it a lot, though.

I'm not condoning Sanford's behavior -- at all --

It kinda sounds like you are. And based on how the beginning of this sentence is shaping up, I think you're going to start seriously condoning it in a second.

-- but in the parade of horribles we've seen from politicians over the last 20 years, Sanford's behavior is almost quaint.

I'd say there's some major league condoning going on.

He fell in love with an age-appropriate woman.

What does this matter? I know this matters to feminists, who are always angry that men tend to prefer younger, more attractive women, but how does selecting an "age-appropriate woman" to betray his wife with mitigate the offense?

His formidable wife didn't run to the stage to gaze admiringly and forgivingly at her disgraced husband to lessen the political damage.

How could she? He was in fucking Argentina, having deserted his post to get some strange.

And what does this matter? How does Jenny Sanford's dignified behavior reflect on Mark Sanford, the guy actually running for the House seat? He threw this woman over -- why should he get some of the credit for her behavior?

This is just confused and sloppy.

She kicked him to the curb and moved on with her life. Every marriage is different and we can't peer inside any but our own, but I admired Jenny Sanford's response.

Oh, wonderful. But see, she wasn't running. The morality debate isn't about her behavior. It's about her adulterous husband, who absconded to Argentina with a hot little Doritos Chalupa.

Again, why is he getting credit for the swell behavior of the woman he betrayed?

Is it just, you know, that Jonah likes Mark Sanford and is cultishly looking for any reason to excuse his misbehavior?

Of course, one could argue that Huma, Hillary, and Silda were more "pro-marriage" in that they stayed by their husbands. And that just gets us back to how the culture has changed. It's a fascinating thing. Speaking very broadly as there are exceptions all over the place, it seems like liberal political couples work harder to save their marriage after a sex scandal.

You mean non-political couples that have these problems don't bother with the pretense and just get divorced?

Hm, I wonder what other non-political person, who sought political office late in life, this special dispensation might be afforded to.

Who knew you were so latitudinarian and hippie-like about the sacred bonds of wedlock after the tut-tut, harumph-harumph performance you've been regaling us with for three years!

By the way: Love your Prison Joke Set. Any chance you'll favor us with your favorite sodomy gags again?

You know, the culture has changed and all.

Again, that's just an impression. I haven't tabulated all the cases.

Really? Because this tossed-off piece seemed so rigorous, well-considered, and well-edited.

But it certainly seems like conservative voters like it more when wives refuse to tolerate their cheating husbands.

And we're back on Jenny Sanford again.

What office is she running for, Jonah? You've made your case: I will vote for Jenny Sanford.

Now, this Buenos Aires Beau Mark Sanford, on the other hand -- him I still have reservations about.

Mark Sanford for Congress

My wife acted with dignity and grace throughout the entire time I was shtupping this broad I met at FuddRucker's Swinger's Night. So, you know -- points for "picking 'em," I guess?

Does that make conservatives less pro-marriage?

It makes you either a confused or disingenuous writer who is determined to smear Mark Sanford with Jenny Sanford's dignity.

You just won't get out of this particular hole you're digging.

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see a guy rob a bank, and then, at trial, tell the judge: "Your honor, what I did was excusable. You see, Jenny Sanford conducted herself with poise and dignity throughout Mark Sanford's infidelities. If you wouldn't punish Jenny Sanford, you shouldn't punish me, either."

And then I'd like the judge to say, "Well, that makes sense to me. I think Jonah Goldberg explained that to me once. Case dismissed."

Or does it mean that liberal political couples care about politics above all else? Or do they place less stock in the value of fidelity (it's just sex, who cares?). It seems to me there are a lot of ways to dissect that. For now, suffice it to say the times have changed.

Oh, the times have changed.

Did they change back, suddenly, in 2015? I guess so.

This is pure obfuscation, or else he's just not a focused writer.

Couch, what do you think?

Star Trek? Is that a good reference? Simpsons?

Anyone remember Quantum Leap? Ziggy, where am I?

References? These are still funny, right?

Anyway:

And it's worth noting that what has changed the most isn't the supply of moral politicians, but the demand for them.

This means the culture has shifted from demanding strict sexual morality, to either demanding it less, or not demanding it at all.

And Goldberg was okay with that... in 2013.

But in 2015, he was suddenly struck by a crisis of sexual conscience.

Ambitious, selfish, amoral men have always been attracted to politics.

Really!

At least in terms of his sex life, John F. Kennedy was a disgusting man who, among other things, pimped out an intern. Other presidents, Republican and Democrat, cheated on their wives, too. Such behavior is not new.

Are you sure? Because you've seemed pretty exercised about it since 2015. You really seemed to blow a gasket when you found out Trump slept with an easy-lay porn star.

But that was all kept from the public eye -- by the press, by the establishment, etc. -- in part because it was understood that if the public found out, the politician's career would be over. Times have changed and the public doesn't demand -- or demand sufficiently -- either the myth or the reality of morality anymore.

Again, until 2015, when a Miracle happened...

Isn't it convenient how the Grand Poobahs of Righteousness and the Keepers of the Flame of Morality turn their puritanical gaze on or off depending on whether they support or oppose a person?

Why, that doesn't sound like actual righteousness or morality at all, Jonah.

That just sounds like bad-faith political opportunism.

I think it's fair to say that conservatives still care more than liberals about maintaining the old standards. And that creates a real dilemma. In an era of moral lassitude, how much do you insist on moral propriety in politics?

Depends on the guy. Seems to me that Marco Rubio had a few major rumors going around about him, but Jonah didn't let that particular pebble-in-shoe break his stride.

Since sin and temptation are bipartisan phenomena, should conservatives be at a constant disadvantage? I don't think there are easy answers there, or at least I can't think of what they might be.

Don't knock yourself short -- you've offered nothing but simplistic, binary, easy answers on this question starting sometime, oh, around June 2015.

Asking Republicans to vote for Colbert Busch in order to punish Mark Sanford strikes me as a hard sell.

But throwing an entire presidential election in 2016 was a pretty easy call, it turns out.

Why support the party you disagree with politically just to punish a man you agree with politically?

A lot of us asked that question in 2016, and decided it wouldn't make sense to reward a party that actively wished to harm us just to Virtue Signal that we don't like adultery.

Others...? Well, others, let us say, chose a different path.

Colbert Busch -- whose political hero, of course, was John F. Kennedy -- wouldn't even answer directly whether she would vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker. On matters of political integrity, it seems to me, Sanford was hardly the clear worse choice.

And Hillary declared she was pro-Open Borders in a Univision debate and also said she was in favor of no restrictions on abortion, right up until the moment of crowning.

Some of us decided that Trump "was hardly the clear worse choice."

Others, again, chose a different path.

i just feel like I'm in the Upside-Down world reading Jonah Goldberg declaring that we should take into consideration the moral consequences of our moral judgments, such as escorting leftwing politicians into power over our lives if we decide that a non-leftwing candidate is too scarlet for our very prissy tastes.

Weird how that sensible observation went out the window in, oh, say June 2015 again.

But 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.

I'm morally offended by the disgusting quantity of repellent Whataboutism going on here!!!

The NeverTrumpers became suuuuuper on-guard against any Whataboutism that might suggest Trump was no worse than the average politician.

Although, of course, they jumped at the chance to offer their own form of Whataboutism -- Hillary is the most moderate Democrat they've run in a generation, as JV Last can tell you now.

Indeed, when Democratic politicians get caught in scandals, the response from liberals is invariably, Why can’t you conservatives lighten up? Who are you to judge? Etc. It 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. Any talk of lightening up or forgiveness is immediately denounced.

Really? Hadn't noticed. Hadn't decided "I'm not being a sap and playing that game any more."

None of us did. We're all just "Cultists," unlike you, Jonah.

You guys are the only ones capable of higher moral thinking.

When I made this decision, it was morally repellent and "cultish." I was just being "tribal."

But when you argued for this same latitudinarian impulse, and argued for the same cost-benefit analysis of cutting off your nose to spite your face, it was the good kind of Whataboutism.

It's absolutely true that conservatives need to wrestle with the question of what we should expect from our politicians. But I'm not sure liberals have anything worth listening to on the subject.

I'll go you one better: I'm not sure Conservatism, Inc. -- #PaycheckConservatism -- has anything left to teach us either on matters of morality or any other matters besides.

* Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that Erickson writes like a very blockheaded 9-year-old doing a book report on a book he only read the bookflap blurbs of?

My review of Mark Sanford. My review of Mark Sanford is that he is very, very good. Mark Sanford is good because Mark Sanford says and does good things. Mark Sanford was a good governor. One time he went for a hike and that was also good. Even if it's not good, criticizing him for it would be MEAN! This is the end of my review of Mark Sanford.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:23 PM

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