In the news surrounding Nevada Senator John Ensign’s admission of infidelity, the media has pounced on the very obvious hypocrisy of the GOP’s family values agenda. Rachel Maddow recently mocked the rumored possibility that Ensign had been toying with the idea of a 2012 presidential run with David Vitter as VP. Talk about redefining marriage – one man, one woman, a couple of staffers, and the best little whorehouse in D.C.

It’s so funny I forgot to laugh.

Yes, the story is dripping with hypocrisy. Yes, Ensign is a sanctimonious sack of shit. But it is almost too obvious. Are glimmers of a much more complicated story being lost amid the furor and considerable eye-rolling over the Ensign scandal? Consider the following report from TPM:

The political consulting firm that reportedly employed Doug Hampton, the husband of Sen. John Ensign’s former girlfriend, has extremely close ties to the philandering Nevada senator.

“Extremely close ties”? Huh.

Or this one from Politico:

He did not identify the woman except to say that she and her husband were both “close friends” who worked for him, and that “the closeness” of their relationship had “put me in situations which led to my inappropriate behavior.”

Their “closeness” led to . . . “situations”?

So, these two couples were very tight, they spend a lot of time together, they were very close . . . they live in VEGAS. You see where I’m going with this?

Isn’t it possible that the Ensigns and the Hamptons were . . . SWINGERS??? Isn’t it possible that these two couples, with “extremely close ties” might have engaged in a bit of consensual extra-marital fooling around? Isn’t it possible the Ensigns and the Hamptons are just . . . kinky?

Is Ensign’s David Carridine moment getting buried here? Carridine, who was recently found hanging in his hotel room after auto-erotic-asphyxiation-gone-horribly-wrong, was “outed” by the event as having some very kinky proclivities. Within the span of a week, Carradine went from tragic hero to creepy pervert.

Could the Ensigns and the Hamptons be using the “affair” to avoid public outing of themselves as kinksters who are into the occasional edgy dalliance?

By the moral compass of today’s political climate, infidelity is a sin. But it is a sin from which one can possibly bounce back. But kinkiness? THAT spells political death. Better to admit that you’re a scumbag for breaking a vow than to admit that you occasionally stray from the confines of “traditional marriage.” Cheating? That makes sense. Consensual swinging? That’s downright depraved, not to mention politically ill-advised if you want the electorate to see you as anything other than a total perv.

No hard evidence, of course, just speculation. Too bad for Ensign that not everything that happens in Vegas stayed in Vegas.