Jake Tapper:
Governor, how would you respond to somebody who says, look, I understand where you're coming from, but you still oppose same-sex marriage, and yet you are somebody who did not lead an exemplary life as a husband? Who are you to deny love between two men or two women, when you are somebody who talks about following his heart, regardless of the laws and traditions of the state of South Carolina? Why are you sitting in judgment of same-sex couples, when you have had the life you have had?
Adulterer Mark Sanford, he who voted to impeach Bill Clinton for, uh, adultery:
Well, I think it's important not to redefine my view, which to an extent what you just described is.
Actually, it's important to try and figure out why you're such a hypocrite.
What I have said is I indeed back in 1996 voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. I was a member of Congress, just as President Clinton signed the bill itself into law and just as President Obama up until about a year ago had allegedly believed and prescribed the same law.
So Clinton evolved. What about you?
I think that if you're a conservative, you believe in this notion of federalism, that one size does not fit all and that we shouldn't have prescriptive answers coming out of Washington, D.C., for any of the different things ultimately that we have got to resolve as a family of Americans.
So if you believe in federalism, why support the Defense of Marriage Act, which was actually the opposite of federalism—it forbade the
federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and providing
federal marriage benefits.
A federalist DOMA would allow states to decide for themselves whether to grant same-sex marriage rights, which the federal government would then respect, but spare other states the obligation of recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages. But of course, that's not what Mark Sanford and his Congress did.
But this isn't about federalism or whatnot. This is about as asshole who will cling to bigotry in order to "defend" marriage, while he himself makes a mockery of the institution. Heck, he had his mistress celebrating with him at his primary victory party Tuesday night.
And yet, if you parse his answer carefully, he never actually says he still opposes equality—he says he voted for DOMA, which is a statement of fact. He says he believes that states should decide, which has nothing to do with his own beliefs. He knows he's a hypocrite and is doing his best to avoid saying anything at all. Just "federalism, federalism, federalism".
Here's the thing—Sanford will obviously get good mileage out of obfuscating this issue in his South Carolina district. But enabling this long-nurtured bigotry is what's costing the GOP so dearly on a national scale. Whatever benefits they can still squeeze out of their southern cultural backwaters won't be enough to offset the damage they're suffering in our increasingly enlightened and tolerant nation.