GOP Rep. Tim Murphy (behind Ryan and McConnell)

Last month, longtime Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican who represents a conservative Western Pennsylvania seat, admitted to having an affair with a woman named Shannon Edwards. The story did not make Murphy look good, but given how many Republicans have stepped out on their wives and lived to tell the tale, it also didn't look like a potential career-ending scandal. That is, until Tuesday.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Paula Reed Ward now reports that in January of this year, Edwards took Murphy to task for posting an anti-abortion message on Facebook, texting him, "[Y]ou have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options."

Edwards' pregnancy scare turned out to be a false alarm, but Murphy has a long history of being an anti-abortion zealot. As Shareblue's Kaili Joy Gray writes, Murphy has co-sponsored unsuccessful bills to try and extend 14th Amendment protections to embryos, and he’s also a co-sponsor of a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks that he literally voted in favor of the day this story broke.

So how did Murphy react to Edwards telling him to stop posting anti-abortion statements on social media? Murphy replied, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."

If Murphy runs again (and that feels like a big if right now), his biggest problem likely would be in the GOP primary in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, a seat Donald Trump won by a wide 58-39 margin. However, if it seems as Murphy couldn’t possibly survive this scandal, Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais would beg to differ. In 2012, weeks away from the general election, voters learned that as a practicing physician, DesJarlais carried on affairs with several of his patients—and tried to convince one to get an abortion. DesJarlais, a Republican, was lucky enough to be running for re-election in a very red seat, and he decisively won.

Still, DesJarlais looked doomed in the 2014 primary against state Sen. Jim Tracy; the GOP establishment gave DesJarlais little help, and Tracy easily outraised him. However, Tracy was inexplicably reluctant to use the congressman’s scandal against him, and DesJarlais ended up pulling off a miraculous 38-vote win. In 2016, attorney Grant Starrett, a former aide to Mitt Romney, stepped up to challenge DesJarlais and lost by a much wider 52-43 margin. This cycle, DesJarlais currently has no strong primary foes on the horizon.

If Murphy follow DesJarlais’ brazen-it-out approach and does seek re-election, he could still win renomination with just a plurality if too many opponents sense weakness and pile in. Still, that's a big if right now. And while DesJarlais benefited from having a primary opponent too timid to aim at his Achilles' heel when the congressman was at his weakest, Murphy may not be so lucky. But if Donald Trump proves anything, it’s that GOP voters are remarkably willing to overlook sinful behavior—as long as one of their own is the sinner.