South Carolina Election Is an Embarrassment to Us All

Mark Sanford and opponent Elizabeth Busch: "Get your hand off me!"

Here's the question for South Carolina voters today:

If a Republican, who was in jail for child molestation, ran against a Democrat, who was a model citizen, how much would the margin of victory for the Republican be? The election if Mark Sanford is not so much a disgrace as it is an expected development from a state that has fallen off the grid of reason and propriety.

I grew up in South Carolina and have always known it to be racist, right-wing "Christian", reactionary, hateful, mean and outside the bounds of human decency. Strom Thurmond, indeed.

Whatever happened to "The New South" that was so much discussed in the 1960s, '70s and '80s? This is the Old South, the one we thought we'd jettisoned with the Civil Rights Movement.

Today is a sad one for all of us.

(Photo: abcnews.com)