What amazes me the most is the very little amount of attention paid to the complete disregard of responsibility and duty of a state's highest elected official for days on end.
OK, so I should have figured that the sex and the emails and everything else would keep the story moving, but to be honest, save for a blurb here or there at the end of a story or article, there has been such little written, spoken or focus upon the dereliction of duty to the very people of a state the Governor Sanford, a public servant was elected to serve.
In what alternate universe is it ok to gloss over one of the most, if not THE most irresponsible thing that someone can do to the people of his state (forget his family as that is a whole other issue)? In what universe is this about his own party forgiving his "transgression" or "sin"? This isn't about cheating on his wife - that is done countless times every day across the country.
This is about potentially putting the lives of South Carolina residents at risk - we can play the "what if" game, and while the "what if" didn't happen, that is really irrelevant (despite it being in my title). Here in NJ, republican Gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie has called Sanford a "mentor". He was the "gold standard" for the rightists who didn't think that helping citizens who lost their jobs was something that the federal government should be doing (but more tax cuts for the uber wealthy and neverneding wars apparently is).
Christie - just like Jindal, Barbour, Palin and the other secessionist Governor, Rick Perry - followed Sanford in calling to reject stimulus money, which would hurt residents of his state. Other republican governors elected him as head of the Republican Governors Association. Sanford was deemed an "up and comer" in the republican Party. And the example he chose to set was to leave his state and ignore any sense of responsibility he had to the people of his state.
If the tables were turned, and it was Corzine or Paterson or Rendell or Kaine or any of the other Democratic Governors who went "missing" for days without putting the Lt. Governor in charge, or so much as telling anyone where he or she was going, there would be (rightfully so) nonstop calls by the Villagers, the right wing noise machine, and quite possibly many prominent Democrats for removal from office - through impeachment, through resignation or whatever other means.
When you are in such a high level position of responsibility, you don't have the flexibility or the ability or the justification to just pick up and leave.
Period.
While the focus is on the emails or the wife or the children or the "begging the Lord for forgiveness" or any of the other sidebar items, the biggest story is being missed or glossed over.
And that is the fact that a Governor violated his responsibility to the people he is supposed to serve. Luckily, a hurricane didn't hit South Carolina or some other disaster didn't hit. But none of that should absolve Sanford - and nothing should distract from the fact that he SHOULD be removed from office.
Not to deal with the family crisis, not because of his mental state regarding a broken relationship - not for anything other than his complete disregard for his responsibility to the people of South Carolina as well as his lack of judgment and willingness to put his state at risk.