5 Questions for Sanford

Instead of hypocrisy, troubled GOP must employ compassion

(NEWSER) - Meghan McCain wants you to forgive Mark Sanford. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that I am younger,” she writes for the Daily Beast, “but it’s of very little concern to me who elected officials sleep with.” Assuming he didn’t do anything illegal, Sanford's infidelity should be between him and his wife. “I know from personal experience the pressure of perfection that is put on politicians and their families.” More»

(NEWSER) - Mark Sanford’s affair stemmed from his love of a woman—and his love of the “dashing new version of himself he saw in her molten eyes,” writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Mark, the Sanford we knew, “was the self-righteous, Bible-thumping prig who pressed for Bill Clinton’s impeachment,” while “Marco, international man of mystery,” was “the un-self-conscious Lothario, canoodling with Maria.” More»

(NEWSER) - Jenny Sanford doesn’t much care what political fate befalls her cheating husband, CNN reports. “His career is not a concern of mine,” South Carolina's first lady told reporters as she left the family’s vacation home. “He’s going to have to worry about that. I’m worried about my family and the character of my children.” She also said that she’d be fine whether she and the footloose governor split up or not. More»

(NEWSER) - Mark Sanford went before the cameras to confess and apologize yesterday, a ritual that is typically “a schtick, a plastic act of absolution performed by men who are just as plastic,” writes Gary Kamiya of Salon. But not this time. Sanford “got all weird and human on us.” Suddenly “instead of a press conference, we had been carried into some Eternal Bedroom of Misery.” it was a trainwreck, Kamiya writes, but it was also that rare thing in a politician: an unscripted expression of emotion. More»

Nothing but 'disgusting politics,' she says

(AP) - Here we go again: A South Carolina lobbyist resigned from a rival political campaign yesterday and then became the second man to claim he had a tryst with Nikki Haley . Lobbyist Larry Marchant says he and Haley, who's running for governor, had a "one night indiscretion" in a Salt Lake City hotel room in June 2008, but admitted he had no proof to back up his allegation. "You can't have any evidence on a one night affair," he says. More»