Last Days of the Republicans Part 16 - What's News Tonight

"This is a personal issue, unless tax-payer funds were used for the travel."

Bull.

Lefties listen to their candidates express a belief in God and, nudge-nudge, know big-tent politics when they see it: "Give us free, government-paid everything, get church out of my face for my strange sexual practices, but allow me to claim a need for pot and peyote for my special rites I invented yesterday."

Conservatives, and I'd say, even not-religious conservatives actually expect their candidates to live by some sort of moral compass. That moral compass doesn't have to match their (the voter's) own precisely, but there has to be something there that serves as a foundation for the candidate's belief system so that when the candidate says "read my lips..." you have some basis to think they mean it.

What does it mean when an avowed atheist takes an oath on a Bible? To me it means nothing, and I'm sure it means nothing to them as well. When our country was founded, most people, even politicians, were religious in one way or another. An oath, to tell the truth, or serve the public meant something. Today's politicians, as well as much of the public that vote for them believe in nothing that can't be touched, worn to a nightclub, switched on, or driven around the block. The only thing that concerns them is not getting caught in their lies and thievery. Concerns about what God may do to them don't enter into it, I assure you. Otherwise, we'd all be hard pressed to explain their actions, which in this case go way beyond a simple affair and in the case of other politicians go way beyond stealing pencils from the supply cabinet. One hundred thousand dollars found in your freezer is just the entry fee for corruption in todays political market. But the fact is, if you are a liberal Democrat, your misdeeds will fade a lot more quickly than if you are a Republican.

After all, if you are a Republican you are supposed to believe in something beyond the tangible, and your misdeeds to the non-believing public smack of the only sin they know about: hypocrisy. Democrats, nudge-nudge, can't be guilty of this mortal sin.

In the future, I'm quite sure that missing a few candidates like Sanford will not be our biggest problem. Our problem will be with what, if anything, the electorate believes in. And from my canvasing, the answer is: precious little.