There’s a certain segment of people who are allowed to succeed no matter how badly they fail. Wall Street CEOs come to mind. But one such sector is found among the leadership of the evangelical right, they thrive best in the least literate states, and such was the case in South Carolina last night:

UK Guardian — In his victory speech on Tuesday night Sanford made an inevitable comparison with Lazarus. He thanked God for giving him yet another chance. “I am one imperfect man saved by God’s grace,” he said.Sanford took 54% of the vote to Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch’s 45%. His victory came four years after the public humiliation of being caught lying, claiming he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail while in fact making a secret trip to visit his mistress in Argentina.

He was also fined $75,000 for state ethics violations, having used campaign finance to fund personal travel.

While most politicians would seek quiet retirement in such circumstances, the Republican has instead successfully resurrected his career. He managed to neutralise the sex scandal by appealing to the electorate for forgiveness and, in the end, Republicans preferred a vulnerable and battered conservative to a Democrat.

I am every bit as cynical and as defeatist as the next skeptic. I put my palm on my face everyday amazed at human stupidity and I’ll happily tell you when I think it’s time to throw in the towel on the entire species. But this isn’t it: don’t let this get under your skin folks. The reason I didn’t get wrapped up in this race, despite some early positive signs, was because I know the wingnut mind and I knew exactly what would happen. When you get enough wingnuts together, i.e., a majority, the outcome is never in doubt.

See, you and I have critical thinking skills, so we can sometimes assume other people have them too, in at least vestigial form, waiting to be awakened by basic rationale. But they don’t. This district in South Carolina is full of the kind of proudly ignorant evangelical moron who becomes more likely, not less, to pick the obvious bad choice the longer and longer they have to analyze — and the word is used here loosely — that choice. It’s the opposite of what you would think.