Stunning news as South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitted to an affair with an Argentine woman at a rambling press conference in Columbia after nearly a week he left town without notice.

Sanford led his staff to believe he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail but, in fact, was in Buenos Aires and was tracked down by a reporter from The State at an airport in Atlanta disembarking a flight from Argentina.

The State obtained several e-mails between Sanford and his Argentine lover.

Senator John Ensign admitted to an extra-marital affair last week. Some media described him as a “Republican presidential contender” but that was the first anybody heard of it. However, Sanford was a contender for the nomination in 2012 but this affair effectively derails that future. Besides with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as potential candidates, is there really room for three Republican philanderers?

These latest developments bode well for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Vice Presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, barring any future meltdown of their own. And let’s be honest: we’re talking about Romney and Palin here. The opportunities for such are enormous.

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Mark Sanford rails against excessive government spending and waste but appears to be in the dark about waste under his own purview.

At a press conference Monday, Sanford discussed “a number of wasteful and inefficient proposals contained in the state budget.”

The governor particularly pointed out the proposed “Capitol Police Force,” which would move the 67 officers assigned to protect the Statehouse from the governor’s control to the legislature.

But under Sanford’s oversight, the Bureau of Protective Services assigned one in every five of those officers to administrative positions in Blythewood — something the governor said he was unaware of when asked at the press conference.

“Shouldn’t the Governor know about his own Cabinet agencies,” the reporter asked?

“If your numbers are accurate, then [the administrative assignments] are a little excessive,” Sanford replied after a long pause.

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My former colleagues at the DNC launched this television ad attacking South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford for “playing politics” with stimulus money:

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