Some free advice for Elizabeth Colbert-Busch.

If this statement from former Governor Mark Sanford checks out (i.e., he was watching the Super Bowl with his kid) then the story stops being “Why was Mark Sanford at his ex-wife’s house?” and starts being “Who leaked sealed court documents?”

…Look, there’s no delicate way to put this: South Carolinian politics are a cesspool, and the rules for playing in that cesspool are like no other place in the Republic’s.  ‘Shame’ is an alien concept.  In 2010 various individuals happily and openly… well, skip ahead to 4:30 and watch:

They all kind of got away with it clean, too: Jake Knotts (the racist) got tossed out of office in the next election, but everybody else is doing just fine. Because that’s how the game is played in South Carolina: the operatives are more or less immune to kinetic damage. It’s the elected officials who are all soft targets.

So, I guess that what I’m saying here is this: I assume that the Colbert-Busch campaign has already had the good sense to stay out of the original illegal activity; it would be well-advised to keep doing that. Because if you don’t think that a South Carolinian Republican operative won’t cheerfully hug a Democrat and then trigger the explosive device, then you don’t know South Carolina very well.