Forget Bruckheimer, Get Me Nora Ephron

There’s something about the Republican Party these days that’s just made for a summer blockbuster movie. If it’s not the Jerry Bruckheimer “terrorists are gonna blow us up and we’re all gonna die if we don’t waterboard this guy” scenarios peddled by Liz Cheney, we have the passionate e-mails sent by Mark Sanford to his Argentinian lady:

You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...

[...]

In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.

Damn, that’s good. What woman wouldn’t adore to hear that from her lover? Forget Dick Cheney’s memoir, I want to read Mark Sanford’s, and I want him to write it. Clearly he's tired of politics, tired of his marriage, tired of his life! You don't self-destruct like that and not have a certain awareness of what you're doing. Aw, honey.

The guy is a romantic and while I’m sure plenty of liberals are going to take pot-shots at him for those e-mails (yes I'm talking to you, Keith Olbermann) I’m enough of a sap to find them charming. Touching. And terribly romantic.

I see pictures of this stuffy politician and then read those words and think: ohhhh! Summer romance! Blockbuster! Get me Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks! Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant! Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor! Or, you know, whatever stars you kids today find hot.

Yes, it’s bad for a politician who, while in Congress voted to impeach Bill Clinton on the grounds the president

... lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.

But I’m not talking about the political stuff.

I just want to give Mark Sanford a hug. This guy poured his heart out onto the keyboard to his one true love and I just hate to see him mocked for it. Call me sappy, hormonal, sentimental, whatever, but this is the stuff of a great summer romance. If there's any redemption for Mark Sanford it's not in Washington but at the multiplex.

If this story plays out the way it should, Sanford realizes his dream of living on a small winery in the Argentinian Pampas with his lady and writing novels about Nazi hunters was a hopeless fantasy. It had always been so, an ephemeral dream of a life that might have been, had they been other people. But they were who they were, no use arguing about it. So he retires from politics and returns to private life with Jenny and the boys, and they try to make a last go of it.

But it’s too late. Too much has happened, there’ve been too many long, stony silences. There's been too much humiliation, dammit. And Jenny, well, she’s tired of the entire game, the forced smiles, the going through the motions of it all. Slowly the realization dawns that what’s been broken can never be repaired, and they divorce.

Mark lives a quiet life for a year, two, maybe even three. It’s a time of healing, contemplation, and taking stock of what’s important. Then one day he decides to take a little trip.

As he sips a robust Tempranillo at the Vincente Resto on a quiet street in Buenos Aires one afternoon, a familiar female figure approaches. They embrace.

Cue music. Roll credits.

Mark Sanford Was In Argentina

It seems my bullshit meter is never wrong and Jeff Woods owes me a beer.

Because now Gov. Sanford says he was not, in fact, hiking the Appalachian Trail but was instead visiting Buenos Aires, Argentina:

ATLANTA -- Gov. Mark Sanford arrived in the Hartsville-Jackson International Airport this morning, having wrapped up a seven-day visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, he said. Sanford said he had not been hiking along the Appalachian Trail, as his staff said in a Tuesday statement to the media.

Isn’t that interesting. I guess the fact that his car was found in the Columbia, S.C., airport parking lot with a sleeping bag inside was our first clue that the hiking story was BS.

So just to recap: after getting his hand slapped by the South Carolina state legislature, Gov. Sanford decided to take his toys and go to South America.

Without telling his wife and family. On Father’s Day weekend.

Yes, this is erratic behavior. Not what we want in a president.

Buh-bye.

Republican Incompetence

This is rich:

Mar 16th, 2009 | COLUMBIA, S.C. -- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is calling on President Barack Obama to get the Democratic National Committee to pull an ad criticizing the Republican's opposition to federal stimulus money.

In a statement Monday, Sanford said the ad is at odds with Obama's campaign promises of ending politics as usual.

The DNC is airing an ad that says Sanford is playing politics with $700 million in stimulus cash instead of using it for health care, jobs and schools. Sanford last week asked Obama to allow the state to use some of the stimulus money to pay down state debt.

Oh, whaah. Politics as usual, huh? South Carolina has the second highest unemployment in the nation at 10.4%, right behind Michigan:

The commission said the number of people without jobs in South Carolina climbed to a record high of 227,986 in January and its data also indicated that for the first time in almost a year the labor force contracted.

I'm just curious how paying down the state debt at a time of high unemployment will help unemployed families. How is this going to put food on the table, pay the rent, or help someone find a job?

It gets worse:

Amid forecasts of a feeble summer of tourism, the state's largest industry, some economists are predicting South Carolina's unemployment rate will hit 14 percent.

Before federal bailout money, the state had to cut $1 billion from a $7 billion budget because of a drop-off in tax revenue. Government workers have been ordered to take unpaid days off. About 135,000 people are collecting some $20 million a week in unemployment benefits, and the state is borrowing federal cash to foot the bill.
Job fairs draw hundreds more applicants than the number of positions available. Food pantries run short of food.

Republican Gov. Mark Sanford is a leading critic of federal stimulus money and is pushing to use the cash over which he has some say to pay off debt. State lawmakers plan to fight him on that. Sanford instead has called for tax cuts to help the economy.

I’m trying to wrap my head around this. The state has been forced to cut its budget because of decreased tax revenue, and must therefore borrow money from the Federal government to pay for unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, unemployment is rising.

So I’m trying to see how tax cuts will further help people in South Carolina. It will certainly create an even bigger budget shortfall for the state. And the governor wants to take a couple of hundred million dollars in federal money and instead of giving it to the people of the state, its intended use, he wants the state to keep it to pay down debt.

Dear friends in South Carolina, I'm sorry you are suffering under this idiocy. Just remember: if the Christian Exodus movement has its way, things will only get worse.