Now we have the official word. We have legitimate answers as to why the governor in that state just on the other side of the Savannah River did not want those federal stimulus dollars.

Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, already had been stimulated in a foreign country.

You’ve heard of South Carolina. It’s the state you get to on U.S. Highway 301 after you pass our great Georgia state welcome center, the oldest operational one in the United States.

While the center in Screven County continues to serve thousands of visitors a year, South Carolina’s welcome center on the same highway is a pretty structure, but has not served in the welcoming capacity for years. Now it instead is the headquarters for the Lower Savannah River Alliance.

Sorry Alliance members and all that you do, but a “South Carolina Welcomes You” sign leaning on a fence behind the building does not make me feel very welcome.

Seems Sanford felt so unwelcome in his own state that he sought out love in not only another state, but another country. He went to Argentina. You can’t find that place with a GPS.

A TomTom would be lost lost plotting its location on a map. Sanford couldn’t always make one of those really long hikes down the Appalachian Trail to Argentina.

As you and the rest of nation now know, Sanford skipped out on his state with a notice to his staff stating he was going for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. That brought about an outcry. Not because Sanford isn’t entitled to a vacation, but rather because the state’s No. 1 dude didn’t pass the gubernatorial decision-making power down to his lieutenant governor.

Then Sanford comes back to his wife, children and South Carolinian citizens and announces a press conference to spring some information about his trip – a trip to Argentina where Argentines live.

That’s a little bit of a walking distance from the trail. Like about 12 million miles. A stroll like that would wear one of those walking sticks down to the knob.

The governor did not go to Argentina to boost South Carolina’s imports of soybean products from the country, but he rather did go to improve international relations. He went to see one Argentine in particular – his girl on the side, Maria Belen Chapur, a divorced former television reporter who lives with her two teenage sons.

Sanford’s wife Jenny first found out about her husband’s affair in January when she ran across some letters. The couple had a discussion on the matter. He, with I am sure plenty of urging, declared he would end the extramarital relationship.

But Sanford, who admits he has “crossed lines” with other women during his 20-year marriage, did not put an end to his relationship with Chapur.

Racy e-mails between Sanford and Chapur that were obtained by The State newspaper contain some fine literary works only a high-ranking state official could compose.

Here is a chosen snippet of Marky Mark’s woo pitching in July 2008 – “You have a level of sophistication that is so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!”

We all should have seen this debauchery coming. We merely needed to look at that South Carolina state flag with its crescent moon and Palmetto tree. You see versions of it on car tags on the front of vehicles. You see it also stuck on the back of vehicles.

Those South Carolinians love those symbols – almost as much as truckers love that shiny outline of a nude woman on their mud flaps. Research still is being done to find out whether Sanford mandated in-state truck drivers only buy outlines modeled after his Argentine smoopie.

South Carolina has its Palmetto tree and new moon. Sanford traveled to Argentina to see his pixie’s full moon. Sanford admits that at least one of his trips out of the country was on taxpayer dollars to see Chapur, a woman Sanford calls his “soul mate.”

The governor says he and his on-the-side gal were pals for years before they got involved. Well you can’t spell Palmetto without “pal” and “met.”

And doesn’t something found in a farmer’s barn rhyme with “to(e)?”

The evidence was there for Gov. Mark San-fornication.

On June 4, the South Carolina Supreme Court ordered Sanford to accept the $700 million in federal stimulus funds he had opposed. It was money from a Democrat-controlled Congress, you know.

The stimulus package grandstanding and now his extracurricular relationship sets Sanford up for what he was rumored to want – a shot at the White House. These days that’s how you get noticed as a presidential nominee. His “I’m as exciting as dry toast” routine wasn’t working.

Most people in the South, including those in South Carolina, did not even know the guy. The only Sanford people down in these parts know is the Bulldogs’ stadium in Athens, Ga.

Sanford, the governor, has been as dull as a 149-year-old butter knife. The year 1860, by the way, was the year South Carolina chose to secede from the Union. That certainly was a move that got South Carolina noticed.

And please do not forget the other grandstanding – the “How dare you dilly dally around with a woman other than your wife” accusations. Many politicians do it, and many politicians do it and get themselves caught doing the same.

Newt Gingrich, a Yankee transplant who called himself a Southerner, helped lead the impeachment tar and feathering of President Clinton during the Commander-in-Chief’s trisk with intern Monica Lewinsky. A few years later Republican Speaker of the House Gingrich admitted that he had relations with his administrative assistant.

Sanford also jumped onto the beat Clinton to a pulp in the media campaign. But like the former President and Speaker of the House, Sanford too messed around outside the sanctity of marriage.

Clinton’s actions were repulsive, but so were the others.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, told a television audience on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that governors and other national leaders are expected “to live by a higher standard because … the culture of the nation” can be hurt by their failings.Hasn’t our country been hurt enough lately.Hey, so-called leaders, please keep your “magnificently gentle kisses” between you and your spouse. 

Enoch Autry is the publisher-editor of the Sylvania Telephone.