Liveblogging The Mark Sanford Gov. Of South Carolina Press Conference

Hi, kittens! We’re liveblogging South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s press conference in the hopes that he’ll explain exactly why it was that he ran off to Argentina. Tango lessons? Secret underground militia training camp? Hookers? Blow? Secret hookers made of blow? Let’s find out.

2:23 PM ET The governor has started the press conference late. He’s still on Latino time.

2:24 PM ET: Mark Sanford is rambling on about hiking in the Appalachian trail. Why? If he was in Argentina?

2:25 PM ET: blah, blah, blah, Frustration with the stimulus package battle. “On an emotional level, I found it exhausting.” Cry us a river.

2:26 PM ET: He just apologized to his wife Jenny and four sons. One of them is named Bolt. White people names!

2:27 PM ET: Sanford looks freckly. A result of sunbathing?

2:27:30 PM ET: He’s apologizing to his staff, to his good friend [Senator] Tom Davis from Beauford, and everyone in South Carolina. Hootie and the Blowfish, that means you, too.

2:29 PM ET: He’s crying over Tom Davis. And speaking about him in the past tense.

2:29 PM ET: “I’m here because of God’s laws which are here to protect man from himself.” Uh-oh. What is coming?

2:32: “I’VE BEEN UNFAITHFUL TO MY WIFE. I DEVELOPED A RELATIONSHIP WITH  A WOMAN IN ARGENTINA.”

2:32:20: “It began as  a series of emails and developed into something more.”

2:32: 30 PM ET: “I would simply say I go back to that simple word of asking for forgiveness.”

2:34 PM ET: Hot damn. We kind of were expecting neo-nazi activity or money laundering.

2: 24 PM ET: A reporter just asked if his wife and family knew of this affair before the trip. Governor Sanford said, “Yes.” He’s been working with a Christian group on it. Weird. Now he’s crying.

2:35 PM ET: Sanford just said it was the first and only time he was unfaithful to his wife. He met “this person” a little over eight years ago.

Very innocent. Struck up a conversation…And there’s a certain irony to this. This person at this time was separated and we ended up in this very serious conversation about how she should get back with her husband for her two boys. At the end of the conversation, we swapped emails and we corresponded very casually… About a year ago, it sparked into something more than that. I’ve seen her  three times since that whole sparking thing. And it was discovered about five months ago. At that point we went into serious overdrive in trying to say, where do you go from here?

I spent the last five days crying in Argentina so I could repeat it when I came back here…While indeed, from a heart-level, there was something real, it was a place based on the fiduciary relationship I had to the people of South Carolina, to my boys, to my wife, based on places I couldn’t go and places she couldn’t go….I am committed to trying to get my heart right….This was selfishness on my part.

2: 45 PM ET: He’s not really making much sense, but basically we think he’s trying to say that he’s breaking up with her.

Well there goes that hope for the Republicans in 2012. Next! And who is this mysterious Argentine person with two sons? Our guess is someone in a political position. Either a politician or a politician’s wife. More to come. Stay tuned!