Now on the homepage, E. J. Dionne Jr. assesses the victory of former governor Mark Sanford in South Carolinas special congressional election:

"I want to publicly acknowledge God's role in all of this," declared a victorious Mark Sanford as he celebrated an unlikely political rebirth Tuesday night with a sermon praising the Supreme Being and the many "angels" who helped the once-disgraced former governor along the way.Perhaps the Almighty did inspire those who drew the boundaries of South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. They packed it with so many Republicans that Sanford was able to engineer a comeback in the polls by debating a flat piece of cardboard bearing the image of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.Voters in the Lowcountry may have been weary of a man who made a national spectacle of himself by covering up an affair when he was chief executive and then hanging around in office. But when called to arms against liberals and spending and big government, they were prepared to forget Sanford's hike on the Appalachian Trail, the one that never happened but was his attempt at a false alibi for being in Argentina to see his lover-now-fiance.

Of course, Sanfords Democratic opponent was Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who tried everything she could to shove party and philosophy out of the voters' minds and keep them focused on the man they had once loathed and laughed at. Her loss has her brother Stephen thinking of becoming a tar heel: