Esquire: Sanford's fight "annoying"

We reported extensively on South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's battle with his state's unemployment agency, and if you followed, called him everything from Moses to Jeremiah -- in other words, about 1,000 years of Jewish history.

When Sanford finally capitulated last week and cut that letter to the feds, it was politically understandable but philosophically disappointing. Not because applying for the loan was sui-generis reprehensible, but because Sanford had made such a public point of refusing it -- he was going to die fighting.

Perhaps that's the motive behind Esquire's barb (probably, the motive is their liberal bias, but indulge, please).

Annoying as that may be, the really annoying thing is that Sanford and his cohorts are certain to keep claiming the moral high ground -- sure, we took the money, but we didn't want to......

Boiled down, this is the latest argument from the anti-bailout group of Republicans, who are now calling George W. Bush a socialist. And these aren't just fringe whackos. They're some of the senior members of the Republican National Committee. Clearly, their main motive is to put themselves in better position to fight President Obama and -- most important of all -- to preserve their right to say "I told you so."

(Ea) "I told you so's" are probably the most annoying people on earth (right behind females). And the worry is that some Republicans are preserving their right to say "I told you so" about a million times before the next election, instead of making an effort to work with Obama.

Now is not the time to try accruing "I told you so's". Politicians might have that luxury; the people certainly don't.