By now, it’s well known that GOP State Senator Paul Stanley from the 31st District has had an affair with an intern. He was extorted by said intern’s boyfriend, then in a move puzzling to me, decided to make the whole thing public by contacting law enforcement.  I mean, it was nice that he decided to resign his leadership position and all, but the truth is that’s not enough.  We are where we are now, and it’s time for Stanley to move on.

If we as Republicans are going to play the family values game in order to win elections, that means those who transgress have to be burned at the stake.  And not just burned, but roasted extra-crispy.

Which brings me to a broader point. We have seen a flurry of Tennessee Republican extra-marital activity in recent years. Being a criminal defense attorney, I am acutely aware that the criminals we know of are not the whole sum. Many are good at not getting caught. So it goes with politicians and sex.

Point is, plenty on our side of the aisle are “doing it”, so to speak, and we need to be adults and accept that is likely the case, then analyze whether putting the social conservative banner at the front of the parade is worth the inevitable damage to the Republican brand. This is not because such values are bad. They are good, but they have next to nothing to do with governing.  When politicians fail in this way, after stumping with great conviction about the evils of gay marriage (next issue, please), other ideological stands get hurt. Limited government, efficient government and low taxes are all more important in a governing sense. I don’t think there is a rational argument otherwise to be made.  If you are a conservative interested in limited government, the legislation of morals, ethics and mores ought to be anathema. It is Bush and Rove who brought us this form of politicking, and look around at the Party now. That is, if you can find any parts of it that aren’t shards on the floor.

And don’t feel too confident about Tennessee and Republican success here. We do not live in a vacuum.  We won here last year but got toasted everywhere else, and since the Supremacy Clause is an indisputably valid part of the Constitution that ought to concern us all.

It’s not that we should want some hedonistic drug user in a position of influence and power, but there are issues that independents and moderates become Republicans on, and those issues tend to be the ones underlying the pocketbook. We abdicated those under Bush, and through a series of marginal wins at the top, we became identified with the political charlatanism Paul Stanley came to embody. I’d rather offer the people something better than wait for the other guy to fail. There is a lesson here, if we are to learn it.