When news of Mark Sanford's unexplained absence first began bubbling up on Monday, Jon Chait suggested that "having lost his fight to turn down stimulus funds, Sanford is now going Galt."
Subsequent developments, of course, seemed to undercut this analysis.
But given Rush Limbaugh's novel re-interpretation of Sanford's South American tryst as a form of politico-economic protest, perhaps the governor was going Galt after all. Writing at the Corner a few months ago, Lisa Schiffren had speculated that the coming wave of Galtism would involve an uptick in golf, "a time-intensive sport that the hard-working have eschewed for the past decade or two because it took too long." Obviously, she didn't think the phenomenon through as fully as Limbaugh.
At the very least, it suggests we should consider enshrining "going Galt" along with "walking the Appalachian trail" and "discussing Ugandan relations" among the euphemisms for this kind of behavior.
--Christopher Orr