Gets steadily better as it goes along. If there’s any silver lining for the GOP in Sanford’s meltdown, it’s that his weirdness has become so singular that no longer can the scandal safely be spun as somehow typical of the party. The guy is sui generis; even coming on the heels of Ensign’s affair, this is now less a narrative about Republicans not being able to keep it in their pants than it is about a midlife crisis gone horribly, embarrassingly wrong. As such, I think the calls for him to step down are less about protecting the state party than simply urging a man who needs a break to take one before he cracks.

He’ll be spending the holiday weekend with his, er, in-laws, presumably as a gesture of reconciliation. Which I guess means this soap opera is over — or is it? Exit question: There’s something awwwwfully familiar about the romance novel photoshop that Stewart uses here, isn’t there?