Posted on 06/25/2009 7:42:15 AM PDT by steve-b
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's admission today that he had an extramarital affair strikes another blow to the GOP's brand as the party of family values, particularly in a region of the country—the Deep South—that has become ever more critical to Republicans, who've lost ground recently in the Northeast and the West.
Outside South Carolina, "Sanford is most well known in states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which are growing more competitive for Democrats," says Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked for Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 campaign season. "This is devastating for the Republican Party in the very region where it has to make gains."
Fast on the heels of an admitted affair by Nevada Sen. John Ensign—another emblem of the GOP's values brand—Sanford's announcement also makes it harder for the national Republican Party to maintain credibility with the values voters who've been most loyal to it.
"As far as the Republicans go, this raises the issue of how marriage is treated by political leaders," says Wendy Wright, the president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America.
Belcher, the Democratic pollster, says the recent string of Republican sex scandals is redolent of the run-up to the 2006 midterm elections, when former House Leader Tom DeLay resigned after being indicted in a campaign finance investigation and Florida Rep. Mark Foley was caught sending lewd text messages to young male congressional pages. Both were Republicans, and Belcher, who was then pollster for DNC Chair Howard Dean, watched the Republican advantage on values issues shrink from more than 20 percentage points to around 5 points over the course of the '06 election cycle.
The Democrats won 31 seats in the House, regaining control of the chamber.
Belcher says he has not conducted national polls since last year's election. "But at this point, when it comes to values, the Republican brand has deteriorated more, and their hopes of making gains in the coming midterms has to be dramatically undermined," he says. "My guess is that we've now gone from a tossup on values with the Republicans to [Democrats] having at least a 4- or 5-point advantage."
Sanford, who was considered a potential 2012 White House contender, has long been a darling of "pro-family" religious conservatives. In the 2008 election, Christian right activists who were unenthusiastic about the Republican presidential field tried unsuccessfully to draft him as a presidential candidate.
Old news.
Time to “MoveOn”...
Look at the funny puppet, sheeple. See my funny puppet dance. Look over here, sheeple, not over there. Shiny dancing puppet here.
Not if the bastard is sliced, diced and tossed into the in-sink-erator ... metaphorically speaking.
Well, no question. Sanford is a jerk. He blew off his wife, his family, his political ambitions, his obligation to the voters, and his duty to the citizens of his state—for what?
And now, he’s got nothing. His just reward.
Yes these left-wing media perverts are getting a good laugh out of this. Hypocrites. Is Barney Frank more admirable than Sanford? Teddy Kennedy?
But the sooner he disappears off the public stage, the better.
Too bad. He could have been a contender, and now he’s zilch.
All of this would make more sense if Sanford wasn’t a libertarian leaning Republican. He wasn’t constantly preaching about social issues.
The people that really do that with great abandon in SC are the RINOs. They yammer on and on about values and God and then, when elected, they buy into the notion that cow farts are ‘destroying the planet’.
Being a queer and running a queer brothel in your basement however does nothing to the dimwits value image because they never had any to start with.
No it doesn't. Are there any conservatives out there saying "It's a private matter" And "It's only sex" as they did with Clinton? Nope.
Of course the fact Barney Frank, now the most prominant Democrat leader in the House of Representatives had male prostitutes in his basement DID NOT HARM the Democrat Brand.
If anything it solidified that sordid brand.
What we have here is a hangover from Senator Craig and Representative Foley who unaccountably ended up as Republicans and not the Democrats Nature had so artfully designed them to be.
They're gone, but now we have to establish that Republicans know where and how it's done ~ and the American public will respond to that.
In the meantime your leader, Barney Frank, was even getting down with the guy over at Fannie Mae that brought the world economy down.
Tell you what, you guys ought to get rid of yours and show us that there are some heterosexuals among today's Democrats, or at least that they have some testosterone.
Shortly there'll be no doubt the Republicans know what to do.
Silly FReeper - outrage is only for Repubs who get caught
/sarc
Aw come on give ‘em a break...Sanford is an Episcopalian; and Ensign was one before becoming a Pentacostal Promise Keeper. So, after all, they belonged to a religion which doesn’t care much about depravity and sins of the flesh. How else can you explain an openly gay, sodomizing bishop for the Diocese of New Hampsire?
Gosh, they are being crusified here like they were real Christians or something. /s
*yawn*
The values that the GOP has committed to holding to is set. Someone tries to live them. They fail.
So, does that mean the values are flawed or the person trying to live them? It’s like a race. It has a start and a finish. Now, just because someone can’t finish it or violates the rules, does that mean the race is flawed?
Honor to God, honor in country, upholding morality, protection of the unborn, faithfulness to spouse, loyalty to family. These are good values worth honoring. These are good values that the GOP has decided to honor. And just because someone falls short of these doesn’t mean that we should now toss out those values.
These stories that pop up are silly because their purpose is to get the GOP for forsake their values and become as unprincipled, immoral and valueless as the DemocRAT brand.
Quite frankly, the GOP already lost their credibility, over their performance within the halls of the Capitol Building. Their conduct outside of the Capitol Building is only a visible sign of the misconduct within it.
NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo....It’s PROOF that Conservatives have STANDARDS!....unlike the Democrats who believe you can do ANYTHING without consequence.
This guy has no ‘values’ thus makes him the perfect hypocrite to ridicule the concept of ‘values’.
Oh, note this is NOT words to excuse the governor, but rather my observation of what a valueless words smith writes like.
I think the brand of family values still applies. Mr. Sanford sinned, he recognized his failings, he’s taking responsibility for what he did along with the repercussions that follow.
The libtard response would be, “Hey, what he does in his own free time is between him and his family”, or “What does this personal issue have to do with leading the State?.”
The family values tag doesn’t result in perfection of character. We are just as human, just as capable of failure as our libtard counter parts. We are not the party of certian anti-family issues as our libtard friends (such as gay marriage, abortion, etc.).
No need for outrage against Edwards, or Slick Willy or Jim McGreevy or Gavin Newsome or Eliot Spitzer. When you run on the “values” of abortion on demand, you get a pass from the left when you act like a slimeball.
You are so spot on. The two Obama nutjobs in my office were on cloud nine that they actually had negative Republican issue to talk about. I immediately ripped into ALL the bad things going on under Obama and left them speechless.
The one female who works for me was shocked and said she had never heard of the things I was talking about and had not been keeping up with it. I said that was the whole point. That she and the other sheep thought they were actually getting news from ABC and National Public Radio and that she and the other sheep were the reason we were about to lose our liberty. I then offered her a free copy of the US Constitution. She refused it and snickered and then ran out of my office.
It was a good day.
The GOP is nothing more than the Dem-lite party. It is time for form a Conservative Union with a platform that dictates removal from the party of any RINO types.
The author of this article illustrates that all humans are stupid
I guess he’s become our “Gary Hart.”
Glad to see another self-important drone bite the dust!
Is it true that Sanford wasn't a social conservative? For months I have been trying to figure out where he was on that spectrum and I could never come up with a conclusion.
We are all sinners. Human nature is fallen. Just because someone sins does not mean that there is no sin. Spitzer and Edwards sinned as well. As someone once said, hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue. Conservatives endorse family values because they are morally correct, not because they can promise that they will never fall into sin or immorality.
....Where was the outrage when Edwards got caught....?
He wasnt in office and hasnt been elected to anything lately. He may have broken campaign fund regulations and that is being investigated. Also, I think he got a break from the press because of his wifes cancer and everyone knew he was a phony anyway.
and pay no attention to the House voting on the largest tax increase in American history, over a fraudulent Carbon threat. Don't worry about those few extra hundred dollars per month on your upcoming utility bill.
It’s not that he wasn’t a social conservative, but he really wasn’t a preacher about morals or anything like that. He was definitely more libertarian in his leanings, IMHO.
While Sanford is a reliable pro-life vote, social issues aren’t his main focus. Fiscal restraint is Sanford’s interest. Yet that not going to stop the media from touting Sanford as a Bible Preacher.
On Fox News, Mort Konkracke said Sanford is a blow to the right wing. He went to say conservatives better support moderates.
People have forgotten that Keith Olberman quit his original show and walked away from MSNBC because he refused to cover the continuing Clinton scandals.
Repub. Ensign has an affair with a woman - SCANDAL! The GOP is through.So Democrats can do anything and none of it hurts the RAT Party. But a couple Republicans cave to a weakness and the GOP is through.
Repub. Sanford has an affair with a woman - SCANDAL! The GOP is through.But then....
Dem. Congressman William 'Cold Cash' Jefferson gets caught taking bribes -- ((((( crickets))))) -- He's innocent till proved guilty. no Harm to dem Party
'My' gov, Dem. Blago gets caught soliciting bribes for Obama' seat -- ((((crickets))) --- He's innocent till proved guilty, annnnnd becomes a 'media star'. no Harm to dem Party
Dem Congressman Patches Kennedy goes into drug rehab again --- ((((( crickets ))))) no Harm to dem Party
Dem NY Gov Spitzer gets caught with hookers, resigns, then --- ((((( crickets )))) --- no Harm to dem Party
Dem. Silky Pony Edwards gets caught having an affair with a woman and a LOVE CHILD - minor scandal, then --- ((((crickets)))) --- but no Harm to dem Party
Yep. Got it. Makes perfect sense.
Not outrage, disappointment. Christians are forgiving people, but the media is not, we surely can agree on that. It is naive to continue public support for a failed conservative values family man, it will only get worse.
We agree.
My point was Dems/media are hypocrites.
There in lies the rub among conservatives, Libertarianism does not equal Conservative, they share some limited government aspirations, but condone the behaviors that rot the movement from the inside.
Ann Coulter point out that Goldwater was very conservative, but he was very liberal socially, and opines that, that had more to do with his loss than the daisy add.
The real rub is that these guys who talk about God and values and are NOT fiscally conservative and believe in big government answers to every solution, keep winning elections in places like SC.
I’m different than many, I guess, but I couldn’t possibly care less how often a candidate attends church if he believes in cutting government and fighting liberalism. That includes whacked out social policy. That said, if a man takes a vow to be faithful to his wife and breaks it, that’s an indication that doesn’t take vows seriously. This can be a problem for someone who has to abide by an oath.
A blow to GOP values brand?
I think not. The reverence for values lies not in perfection, in never making mistakes. It’s in the aftermath. In the GOP, the perps tend to suffer, even to resign. Not so for the Democrats. They have to be voted or thrown out, something that often doesn’t happen. They certainly don’t go willingly.
Rush just gave a detailed reason why we need hypocrisy, in response to many emails claiming, Sanford's folly proves we need to dump social values from the ticket.
I suggest you read Mark Levin's new book Liberty to Tyranny for a reasoned response to Libertarianism.
I’ve read Liberty and Tyranny. I don’t agree with Levin on that at all.
We don’t need to remove social values from the ticket, but when social values REPLACE small government fiscal conservatism, then all we’re doing is electing more ‘moral’ tyrants, rather than leftist tyrants. Big government IS tyranny. When the government grows, it matters not which ‘party’ the culprits belong to, it is a noose around all of our necks.
Some folks may like big government if ‘their side’ controls it. I’m not one of those people.
But the sooner he disappears off the public stage, the better.
I don’t think Sanford’s career is necessarily over. His wife is willing to forgive him, I think the voters might too. After all, Vitter is still in office, Larry Craig didn’t resign his seat, and Newt Gingrich still has some reputation among Republicans.
Sanford might be a contender again some day. Probably not in 2012, but perhaps in 2016 if the Repub candidate doesn’t win next election.
Sanford was a L Ron Paul clone.
Most of his supporters on FR and bloggers are third party loons.
The 1998 resolution to make regine change in Iraq the official policy of the U.S. , both L Ron Paul and Sanford
voted against it.
Sanford said “I don’t believe in preemptive war”
so typical of the libertarians and the Left.
There are getting to be a lot more of us ‘third party loons’ than you loyal Republicrats, so be nice.
I am Shocked
I bet lots of things sneak up on you. :)
In your dreams.
Unfortunately, it’s more like nightmares. You see, while you’re voting for big government Republicrats who yammer on about God and morals while voting to stop cow farts from ‘destroying the planet’, thus proving that they actually believe no such thing, the big government you are voting for is destroying all of our freedoms.
I hardly think I vote FOR republicrats, the Last president I voted For was Reagan, the rest of the elections I voted against the Commie.
I would have done a write in for Duncan Hunter until, Palin came to the ticket, so I voted for her and the old Commie, counting on him being less harm than Obama. I could have been wrong on that one, but he is pretty old, and I figured he would be a one termer at best.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.