On the difference between Mark Sanford and Bill Clinton

"Were you calling for Bill Clinton to step down?! Huh?!"

Why yes, yes I was. Bill Clinton lied to the nation about his affair and that was a terrible thing to do, he lied under oath and he should've stepped down. I agree.

John Edwards is even worse, what he did was vile. But John Edwards was a private citizen when he did it, while that doesn't excuse it, it does disqualify him from discussion.

Yes, you lose certain rights when you become the Governor of a State. You don't become a public official to play golf with powerful people, you do it to shape policy, you become a public servant. A CEO isn't paying you, the people are paying you, you work for them and you answer to them whenever they call your name. This is why "liberals" (The Democratic Party is a moderate party, just FYI. Here's a left-wing party.) are harder on Mr. Sanford than they are on Mr. Edwards.

To find out why they're harder on Mr. Sanford than they are on Mr. Clinton you have to look no further than the platforms of the two candidates. Mr. Sanford is a Christian conservative, who ran on a platform of family values, a platform of Christian morals, and more than once defended "the traditional family unit". Mr. Clinton did not. This is why Mr. Sanford is a hypocritical scoundrel while Mr. Clinton is simply a scoundrel. It's not that hard to understand.

Mr. Sanford along with his fellow Republicans Mark Foley, John Ensign, and Larry Craig ran on a platform of bravado. A platform that proclaimed them as men and their male opponents from other parties as, well, not men. They spoke of defending the "family unit", bringing morality back into the Government and what it meant to be of good moral character. But mostly, being a man! They spoke to Preachers and got the Church goers to vote for them, they spun a record that played well in houses of worship every Sunday and they reaped the rewards of doing that, and then they lied to those people. No "liberal" does this. These four men proved to be of disgraceful moral fiber despite spending entire campaigns questioning that of their opponents, often sacrificing time to speak on real issues in the process. For this, they're being put to the sword, and rightly so. They shouldn't be defended, these men aren't martyrs, they're scoundrels.

There is nothing wrong with running on a platform of morality, that's perfectly fine. We have freedom of speech in this country. If you want to tout your dedication to your faith, do it, please. But you'd better live up to it. And when the crap hits the fan, don't look at the people who didn't profess it in the first place.

Until the Republicans can find a candidate that fits these requirements within their own party I've taken the time to find one who fits them in another party. A self-made man, a dedicated husband, a proud father, a man of strong faith and a man of values. Why don't you stop yelling for a second, and give him a look sometime.

So that's where Mark Sanford was, but why are we surprised?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford cheated on his wife. Hardcore. He didn't cheat on her in South Carolina, he didn't even pop up to North Carolina for a bit of afternoon delight, no, Mark left the freaking continent.

Sanford, who looks like what would happen if you spliced the DNA of Bert with that of a carrot, went AWOL last week but everyone's suspicions were raised when his wife said she "didn't know where he was" but wasn't the least bit worried. Republicans rushed to defend one of their rising stars - Sanford has been listed as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012 - but even they had to know something was amiss. Some spoke of how Sanford was supposedly out hiking, and "being a man, something lubrals (liberals) wouldn't understand". Well, if being a man means leaving the your wife and four children behind while you desecrate your marriage thousands of miles away, I don't know if that's what I want to be.

Now their defense is that Sanford "made a mistake" and that it's "no worse than what Clinton or Edwards did" (ah, the old Slick Willy chestnut), but they're wrong. They're very wrong. The actions of Bill Clinton and John Edwards were nothing short of despicable, no one is doubting that, but Clinton and Edwards never ran on a platform of family values, Christian morals, and never pushed sexual minorities to the fringes of society with their rhetoric. Sanford has made no secret of his distaste for homosexuals, bisexuals, or even sexually active heterosexuals who may not be married. He is going to get a lot of stick for this incident, and he deserves every bit of it. There is no room to defend this hypocritical lying sack of crap, there isn't.

Soon we will hear them climb atop their towers and cry foul of the "liberal media", the same liberal media that includes The State newspaper, Columbia's daily, which received the erotic emails exchanged between Sanford and his lover as early as last December and elected to withhold them, in essence, protecting a conservative official from public scorn. All the outlets are blocked off, Sanford is impossible to defend. You can't blame this one on Obama, who, I may add, is a dedicated husband and father. He's also a Christian. He is what Sanford claimed to be.

Furthermore Sanford was a harsh critic of Bill Clinton and voted for the President's impeachment following his affair in the 1990s. Sanford actually resorted to name calling, though he was never as bad as Lindsay Graham. Sanford may not have lied under court oath, but he did lie. He lied under religious oath to his wife (you know, something about a Preacher, an alter, a Church, lots of people watching), he lied to his family, he lied to his staff, and he lied to South Carolina. By his own standards, he is unfit for leadership.

No, this isn't a good time to jump on Mark Sanford, that happened a long time ago.

One person in the Observer editorial forum asked if we could send NC Gov. Bev Perdue for a hike and transfer Sanford here, you still want that? Bev might be stupid, but she has nothing on Sanford.

I'm not a Democrat, in fact I'm not very fond of them, but thanks to people like Mark Sanford, John Ensign, Larry Craig, and Mark Foley (all supposedly Christian men who ran on a platform of morals only to prove themselves hypocrites) this country is going to become a one party state with the Democrats in charge.

Well, at least the Democrats try. The SC Libertarian party is probably loving this, and they have every right to be. Every right to be.