The Long View

The summer solstice has come and gone here in Connecticut, with no observable change in the weather–the same chill and damp as all spring.

The same cannot be said elsewhere in the US, where the solstice seems to have marked the beginning of the Republican adultery season.

First, Senator John Ensign, Republican from Nevada, disclosed his marital infidelity. Ensign has that “senator from central casting” look, a moussed and blow-dried “silver fox” (not unlike President Bill Clinton, whose impeachment for the high crime and misdemeanor of lying about a blow job Ensign vigorously pursued as a congressman). Ensign is a member of the Pentecostal International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. (A church with that many qualifiers in its name is like calling your country “The People’s Republic of ___”; if you have to name it, you probably can’t claim it.) He does not appear prepared to take his own advice to Clinton and Senator Larry (”Wide Stance, Tap Thrice for a Good Time”) Craig, namely that they should resign from office.

Second, the itinerant Republican governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford. The last time he was in the news occurred when he attempted to refuse the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus package funds for his state. Sanford ‘fessed up to his hanky panky after he disappeared without giving a forwarding address, was claimed to be hiking in the Carolina Appalachians, but was actually in Argentina trying to end an adulterous affair. (”Appalachia,” “Argentina,” I get those “A” places mixed up all the time.)

Democrats, pundits, and the Left have made a field day with the egregious duplicity and hypocrisy of these “bible believing” Chrustians for whom Jesus’ injunctions about marital fidelity (remember that if you even look at someone who’s not your spouse you are committing adultery in your heart–remember Jimmy Carter’s much ridiculed confession?) seem to have been flagrantly ignored.

However, I want to give Ensign and Sanford (and the Republican party) credit where credit is due. They have taken political risks to test innovative programs in an attempt to blaze a new path for the Republican party. Ensign employed his mistress, and employed her cuckolded husband and her son, thus managing to combine family values policies and an economic stimulus plan. Sanford has taken a cue from the feminists (remember “the personal is the political”?) and put a new spin on “foreign affairs.”

What other other innovations shall we see from the New Grand Old Party?