Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

"Does anybody need yet another politician caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole?"---Lou Reed

With today's news that Sarah Palin will be resigning as Governor of Alaska at the end of the month, coupled with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission of infidelity and bizarre ongoing behavior since, there is a question that must be asked. What in the hell is going on in the party of "family values?"

Both Palin and Sanford were considered to be major contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, but that's next to impossible now.

In the case of Palin's forthcoming resignation, one has to be wondering what she must be thinking? Popular governors don't typically resign in their first term unless there's a scandal of some sort. There are rumors flying around that a criminal investigation is in the offing in Alaska. But for now, those are just rumors. For a politician who so clearly has/had ambitions of reaching higher office, it's difficult to see how quitting on your state is helpful. One of the main criticisms of Palin during her run for Vice President last year was that as a governor who had not completed one term, she lacked the necessary experience to be a heartbeat away from assuming the presidency. So to then decide not to even complete that term is an absolutely stunning decision. Watching her strange, rambling press conference today (she didn't even use the word resignation), I was reminded of New York Jets coach Rich Kotite, who after a disastrous 1-15 season in 1996 infamously said "I wasn't fired and I didn't quit." Here is a woman who withstood the unfortunate interview with Katie Couric, the teen pregnancy of daughter Bristol, the withering imitations of Tina Fey, and the constant post-election criticism from the McCain campaign to still be a top republican on the national scene. Now, you can stick a fork in her.

Of course, Palin's announcement today is good news for Governor Sanford. Not because it improves his chances of supplanting her as the top christian conservative candidate in 2012, but because it gets his increasingly erratic behavior off the front page of the newspaper. Here's a rising star in the republican party, the head of the Republican Governor's Association, who disappeared for 4 days last month to go see his mistress in Argentina! And when I say disappeared, I mean disappeared. His wife and kids didn't know where he was, his staff said he was hiking the Appalachian trail, and the Lieutenant Governor was clueless, as well, to his whereabouts. This means that for the better part of a week, no one was running the state of South Carolina. Unlike Palin, however, Sanford has not resigned and says he will not even consider it. Instead, he has given a series of peculiar statements referring to his supposedly former mistress as his "soul mate" and noting previous liaisons with women where he may have gotten to second base "but I didn't cross the sex line." When former President Clinton was caught with Monica Lewinsky, then house member Sanford said that Clinton should resign. Well, the difference between Clinton and Sanford is that Clinton, in his Machiavellian way, was still able to compartmentalize the situation and do his job while Sanford seems to be coming apart at the seams. Daily.

Speaking of sex scandals, how is it that the "family values" party got so good at them? Aside from Sanford, there's Rudy Giuliani, who moved his mistress into the mayor's residence in New York before his divorce was final. There's Newt Gingrich, who like Sanford called for Clinton's resignation while himself carrying on an affair. There's former Florida house member Mark Foley, who in 2006 sent salacious text messages to male pages in congress. There's Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who in 2007 was caught up in the DC Madame prostitution ring as a "John." There's Idaho Senator Larry Craig who was found guilty of soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom in Minneapolis. And just three weeks ago there was Nevada Senator John Ensign (who had presidential aspirations as well) who stepped down from his republican leadership post after admitting to an extramarital affair.

To be fair, democrats have certainly had there share of sex scandals as well. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer carrying on with a prostitute and presidential candidate John Edwards cavorting with a woman hired to shoot footage of his campaign while his wife was (and still is) suffering from cancer are two recent examples that come to mind. But democrats don't shove morality down your throat the way republicans do.

Starting with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, republicans did a masterful job of using social "wedge" issues to grow their party. Whether it's abortion, gay marriage, abstinence-only-sex education in schools, the right wing of the party (headed by the christian coalition) had great electoral success from 1980-2006. It took George Bush's incompetence with Iraq, Katrina, and the economy to swing things back to the left.

So where does this leave the Republican Party and their quest for the white house in 2012? Well, I'm sure that somewhere Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are smiling. Former Arkansas Governor Huckabee may be symbolic of the GOP's problems (pale, male, and stale), but when he's not making jokes about Barack Obama getting shot he seems like a decent enough guy. And former Massachusetts Governor Romney may be Mormon (a real issue for some christian conservatives) and a flip-flopper (abortion, gay rights, gun control) but he does seem devoted to his wife in a strange, sexagenarian Ken doll sort of way. But here's the real problem for republicans: The politician who seems most devoted to his wife and kids, who is the very portrait of "family values" isn't even a republican. He's the very popular President of the United States. Good luck running against that.

Sumo-Pop July 3, 2009