Opinion

Mark Sanford’s road to redemption

W. James Antle III Managing Editor
Font Size:

This year, South Carolina will have a governor, two senators, and seven U.S. House members running for re-election. Most of them will face primary or general election opponents.

Mark Sanford won’t.

The USA Today headline said it best: “Once disgraced, Mark Sanford is now unopposed.” Less than a year ago, the headlines about Sanford looked very different: “GOP now bearish on Sanford’s chances in S.C.”

Eighteen days later, Sanford won a special election to return to Congress, winning 54 percent of the vote. The Democrats had spent some $2.6 million to elect Stephen Colbert’s sister instead. Come November, they won’t even have a candidate on the ballot.

“Lazarus raised,” writes Slate‘s Dave Weigel.

Until recently, the most common biblical allusion made to Sanford was his violation of the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” As governor of South Carolina, Sanford disappeared from the state for an alleged hike along the Appalachian trail that turned out to be a clandestine trip down lover’s lane.

Sanford’s marriage and governorship were ruined. So, it was thought, were his reputation and political career.

Then the South Carolina Republican made a novel argument: “I absolutely failed in my personal life and my marriage but one place I never did fail was with the taxpayers.”

Nonsense, replied his critics. Those trips to see his mistress (now fiancee), including at least his fateful sojourn to Argentina, were on the taxpayers’ dime. But the voters of South Carolina’s first congressional district decided that he fought to spare them far greater expenses, like the $831 billion federal stimulus package and state budgets — often backed by fellow Republicans — that grew faster than inflation plus population growth.

As governor, Sanford issued over 100 budget vetoes in 2004 alone.

We know how Sanford’s first marriage vows turned out. But did he hold his side of the bargain with his constituents?

Sanford voted against the farm bill, not once, but twice. Both times, most Republicans voted yes. The second legislative package cost nearly $1 trillion.

He was also one of just 94 congressmen to vote against the bipartisan Ryan-Murray budget, which traded away some of the hard-won sequestration budget cuts.

The South Carolinian has voted not once but twice against the federal government taking on more debt without negotiated spending cuts.

When President Barack Obama wanted to launch an expensive war in Syria on dubious national security grounds, Sanford was against it.

Sanford is one of just 17 House members with a better than 90 percent rating from FreedomWorks in the last Congress. He has a 95 percent score from Club for Growth.

When not voting against bloated spending, Sanford has supported constitutionally limited government in other ways. He has opposed indefinite detention. He has supported NSA reforms allowing for greater oversight of government surveillance, going so far as to introduce a bill that would make the National Security Agency head subject to Senate confirmation.

Sanford also joined an amicus brief supporting a motion that would require the publication of significant FISA court opinions. “It is important to better understand how Section 215 of the Patriot Act is being implemented and where there is room for improvement,” he said in a statement.

It would be great if constitutional conservatism was common, but it isn’t. Most members of Congress can always find 17 trillion reasons to grow the federal government. Sanford, to his credit, usually doesn’t.

Maybe you can’t make up for breaking a sacred promise to your wife by keeping a morally significant promise to uphold the Constitution. So far, however, Mark Sanford has been trying.

Perhaps that will be the erstwhile Appalachian trail hiker’s road to redemption.

I don’t know what his family or his Creator think about it. But the voters in his district sure seem to like it.

W. James Antle III is the editor of The Daily Caller News Foundation and author of the book Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped? Follow him on Twitter.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel