This may be unpopular so I'm just going to say it. I'm sick of seeing politicians and partisans throw up the perp's family as a partial shield. If this marriage breaks up, Sanford's family will now join the tens of millions of American families torn apart by a potentially nasty divorce. And many of us know how much that sucks from personal experience. Sucks more to be a kid whose cheating parents live paycheck to paycheck and don't have a high-paying job or a zillion fucking dollars to blunt the worst consequences. Or a kid who loses his health insurance right about the time s/he needs a liver transplant because his single parent got laid off thanks to the bankstas, or whose dad is going to jail over some bullshit minor drug charge, or whose mom gets cancer and has no insurance, or one who has a parent killed in Iraq.
Politics can't do much to help Sanford's family, he's seen to that. But politicians can do a whole lot to help the millions of middle class kids in America whose lives are turned upside down everyday by nasty break ups, or worse--much, much worse. So as long as all of DC is talking and tweet'n away about this, it might be nice if they'd think a little bit about those kids, too. And lastly, just in case some troll tries to construe this post as a glancing shot at innocent family members, no one wishes any harm on Sanford's wife or kids. And in the end, let's point out that in fact no one actually perpetrated any harm on this wife and these kids, except for Mark Sanford.