Gov. Mark Sanford always has been a loner, but on Saturday he didn’t have a friend in the House.
Not a single member of the House Republican Caucus spoke up for the embattled GOP governor in this oceanfront city at an organizational meeting that wrapped up with a 45-minute discussion about why Sanford should resign or be impeached.
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, a Charleston Republican, resisted calls from members to circulate a caucus letter to urge Sanford to step down or begin immediate impeachment action. Harrell said he wants the caucus to wait until a State Ethics Commission investigation is complete to ensure that impeachment proceedings would be based on fact.
The investigation began Aug. 10 and is expected to take between four and six weeks to complete.
Sanford is a goner. His party won’t renominate him and would stand to gain from forcing him out before the 2010 election (if it can find a way to do so without damaging itself). He may (as I understand it) have illegally used state money for his travels. I’ll bet his position will become untenable well before the next election.
The main issue for the country club Republicans [may they go down in defeat] is that [heh] if he resigns then the hated competitor Bauer gets to be governor for over a year thus giving him an incumbent edge in the free-for-all of the governor’s election.
As of now the movement in that group is a vacillation between that depressing eventuality OR the idea that if Sanford does *not* resign, then no Republican at all will be elected governor.
What a bunch of unprincipled schmucks.
Sanford will follow the lead of his national brethren, Ensign, Vitter, Craig, Gibbons, Haggard, etc. etc. i.e. he will apologize profusely for being a total hypocrite, stand his ground and refuse to go away in disgrace, and insist he has seen the light and can now be forgiven and trusted by all.
Mitchell, not sure who Gibbons is, or why Haggard belongs on your list, but if you’re going to throw stones, you need to aim also at Sen. Dodd and the late Sen. Kennedy.
Well you can certainly include them as being made of similar moral fiber to those I listed. I’m not sure Kennedy fits into my list, however, as I was listing people who held themselves out as champions of morality and “family values” only to be proven hypocrites; and I am not sure Kennedy ever had the nerve to portray himself in that manner (at least not in recent history). As for Dodd, I guess I know nothing about Dodd’s statements regarding his morality, but if he has touted his moral superiority, he should be included in my list, as should Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. The list wasn’t exhaustive. For me its a truth in labeling issue. Voters are entitled to get what they bought.