It’s good to be Timothy M. Kaine these days principally because he’s not Mark Sanford. Virginia’s governor, like his counterpart in South Carolina, gets around, but Kaine, in senses platonic and political. So while South Carolina proceeds with inquiries to determine whether Sanford, the skunk, spent taxpayer cash to pursue l’amour in Argentina, Virginia Republicans have halted nosing into the possible use of state tax money to aid Kaine’s cross-country politicking as Democratic National Committee chairman. C’est la vie.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry was raising money at campaign headquarters when an Associated Press reporter called his press staff to ask what he was doing. An hour later, he walked into AP’s statehouse bureau to show he was alive and well and not, say, in South America for a romantic rendezvous.

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