Humorist Jon Swift quotes the disgraced and disgraceful then-candidate Senator David Vitter in 2004:

We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts’s values.

Source: Jon Swift

And when it comes to Louisiana values one could always snark that Sen. Vitter was a perfect match…

...though this would be grossly unfair to the fine people of Lousiana. Who are just stuck with a bunch of supercilious liars like Mr. Vitter. And, it must be said I think the actual hypocrite in this situation is, Wendy Vitter, who’s (still) married to the Senator.

How does that work? Well, David Vitter could be accused merely of parroting the sort of lies that need to be told to be elected in a socioeconomically disadvantaged state that’s desperate to do something/anything about their in-their-own-terms morally wretched condition… even if it’s the wrong thing. He didn’t have to believe it. And the evidence suggests he didn’t believe in it. But he could have just been saying what needed to be said in order to advance his own, personal well being.

Wendy Vitter? She wasn’t running for anything when, in response to a previous revelation about her husband’s dalliances with prostitutes, she said

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he’d had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston’s wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

I got it from Matthew Yglesias. Follow his links to their ultimate source starting here.

As far as one can tell Ms. Vitter has neither castrated nor divorced her (serially?) philandering husband.

Which, of course, most people don’t do when confronted with a partner’s infidelity. But by talking phony macho bullshit she, as much as her husband, contributed to a culture of extreme and largely domestic violence that is also part of Louisiana values (13.9 murders per 100,000 pre-Katrina) vs. Massachusetts (only 2.7 murders per 100,000)!

Don’t get me wrong, in a small way I’m glad that neither Vitter practiced what he or she preached because both preached from unsustainable, uncreditable pulpits. But it would have been better for the country, for their state, and for their families had neither preached at all.