President Trump has acquired a third challenger in the GOP Presidential primary: Former South Carolina governor and Representative Mark Sanford. Governor Sanford acquired notoriety during his stint in the South Carolina governor’s seat for disappearing for a couple of weeks, claiming he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, when in actuality the married man was visiting a paramour in Argentina.
He refused to resign when the scandal became public, but termed out of office in 2011.
Governor Sanford had been a member of the House of Representatives prior to being Governor, and after being a governor, he returned to the House in a 2013 special election. He left the House when he was defeated in the 2018 primary; the general election was then promptly lost by the Trumpist who beat him, Katie Arrington, to a Democrat in a district that had been reliably Republican for years.
Clearly, Sanford has plenty of experience with both ups and downs. His TrumpScore?
Indeed, his criticisms and disagreements of President Trump were widely credited with his failure in the primary. The Party of Trump is unable to tolerate critiques of their Great Leader.
President Trump’s intra-party approval rating is 88%. Nevada, South Carolina, Kansas, and Arizona GOP parties have canceled their nominating contests, giving Trump early, automatic victories. So why is Sanford running?
Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) announced exclusively on Fox News Sunday that he will challenge President Trump in the Republican primary. #FNS #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/2xwdSGpW0d
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) September 8, 2019
From the Post & Courier of Charleston:
“I think we need to have a conversation on what it means to be a Republican. I think that as a Republican Party, we have lost our way,” Sanford said in his interview with Chris Wallace in Washington. …
He is basing his run on a warning that the Republican Party is at an “inflection point” after three years of the Trump presidency, though he is making attention to the ballooning national debt his focal point.
“We need to have a conversation about humility,” Sanford also said during the interview as he noted Trump’s penchant for commenting by tweet “is not leadership.”
Sanford does not have a realistic chance of winning at this stage of the game, although if Trump is forced to drop out, he, Walsh, and Weld are then in a commanding position relative to undeclared candidates such as VP Pence. Given Trump’s age and disturbing behavior, which hints at mental pathologies, this is not an unthinkable scenario.
But, on a deeper level, a flawed man may be bringing important questions to the Republicans, demanding by their very existence an answer. Both Trump and Sanford have committed adultery, so the offense can no longer be used as an excuse to ignore Sanford by the members of GOP; the sheer hypocrisy would cause meltdowns – or the sudden appearance of a laughing Satan.
Those questions won’t reach all of the Republican base; many will ignore Sanford as the not-Trump. There will be limited sympathies between Sanford and the base, as both his TrumpScore and his summarization by On The Issues illustrates. Here are the charts of Sanford and Trump:
Governor Sanford
President Trump
However, he’ll still be a voice of sanity and, perhaps, even morality for a political party that has become a debased ghost of what it was before the advent not of Trump, but of Gingrich and his crowd. He’ll keep pricking away, and we may see the more moderate edge of the Republican Party throw up its hands and sit this election out.
