As you no doubt have heard by now, Sen. John Ensign [R, NV] yesterday fessed up to having had an extramarital affair last year with one of his campaign staffers, who also happens to be the wife of one of his Senate staffers.. Today he relinquished his leadership position as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

The Policy Committee is basically the Senate GOP’s internal think tank. They are highly influential in shaping the party’s thinking on legislative issues and deciding what policy strategies they will pursue in Congress. According to Politico, Sen. John Thune [R, SD] appears to be the most likely candidate right now for taking over Ensign’s position. Ideologically, there’s not a whole lot of room between Thune and Ensign. Thune is, perhaps, slightly less conservative than Ensign, which is reflected in their lifetime ratings from the American Conservative Union and a comparison of their voting records. The OpenCongress head-to-head vote comparison tool only shows a dozen or so instances when Thune and Ensign voted differently on major legislation, but in just about every case Thune’s vote was to the left of Ensign’s.

Ensign and Thune were both considered leading hopefuls Republicans in the 2012 presidential race. Ensign, as the NYTimes points out, had recently travelled to Iowa, “always a trip considered as a possible sign of someone’s presidential ambitions.” Needless to say, the admission of his affair takes him out of the running. “One thing is for sure, he cannot go any further in Senate leadership, or higher in electoral politics now,” a Republican Senate aide said to Manu Raju at the Politico.

Congressional Republicans have had their share of sex scandals in recent years, and with each of them, Democrats take the obvious opportunity to point out the hypocrisy with the “pro-marriage” positions they have taken in the past. Here’s Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly with the particulars of Ensign’s background on the issue:

When Bill Clinton’s adultery came to public light, Ensign not only voted to remove the president from office, but insisted the president should resign as a result of the personal scandal. When former Sen. Larry Craig was caught up in a sex scandal, Ensign not only called for Craig’s ouster, but led the charge against him.

Ensign has also been a fierce opponent of marriage equality, and supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In 2004, the Nevada Republican lectured his colleagues, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.”

And did I mention that Ensign is a longtime member of the the Promise Keepers, a conservative evangelical group that promotes strong families and marriages?

Article Tags: Government Transparency Scandal U.S. Senate