Really? To me, this demonstrates the problem with partisan labels. Padgett ran a campaign where he really broke the boundaries of truthfulness in asserting his qualifications for office, worked hard to obfuscate simple things like what his business (the cornerstone of his alleged qualifications) actually is, and pushed the boundaries of good judgement by doing things like using his position on a nonprofit board to use the children served by the nonprofit as walking billboards for his candidacy in an MLK Day parade. He also spent most of his time trying really hard to sound like a Republican, living the private-sector bootstrap entrepreneurial dream (never mind his family political connections that enabled his very small business to live off 100% taxpayer funded contracts).

Campfield is undoubtedly a horrible excuse for a state senator, with well-documented examples of bad judgement and fragile connections with reality.

But now, just because Padgett has a D after his name, he gets a clean slate, your vote and your eternal gratitude? All that other stuff that might suggest that he would also be a poor example of a state senator gets tossed out, if he'll just run to beat the other bad politician, but who has an R after his name. Isn't that at the root of a big problem with current politics? We don't care how bad our guy is, just as long as we think he can beat the other side?

South Carolina conservative Republicans threw most of their supposed principles to the winds when they gave Newt Gingrich 40% of their votes over the weekend. Family values? No problem. Surely he wasn't lying when he claimed to have repented for his sins and asked God's forgiveness for decades of repeatedly violating just about every tenet of a social conservative's understanding of "family values." None of that matters, so long as they think Newt can take on Obama (a guy who seems to actually exemplify most of those same "family values" concepts, with a single, long-standing marriage to one woman, and making an obvious concerted effort to bring up two lovely, well-adjusted daughters).

We won't get any better at governing ourselves if we continue to prioritize beating the other side over having any expectations that "our guy" should actually be any better than "their guy."