Hours before the state's unemployment fund would have run dry, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) "agreed to apply for a $146 million federal loan to shore it up, after weeks of refusing to do so." Sanford has long questioned the accuracy of the state's unemployment figures which are the third worst in the nation at 8.4 percent. The governor said he changed his position because several state lawmakers had agreed to request an audit of the state unemployment agency which Sanford said possessed an "utter disdain for accountability." The director of the state unemployment agency said that "the agency was audited every year by an accounting firm and had been given a clean bill of health."
Ideally, I'd like you to think of this sorry example of Republican malfeasance and ideological inflexibility whenever anyone on the Right attempts to shoehorn the phrase "Compassionate Conservatism" into the public dialogue. In point of fact, "Compassionate Conservatism" is neither. This meaningless label, merely another example of Republican verbal masturbation, functions as just so much camouflage for their "I got mine, you can damn well get your own" ideology.
Sanford, who was willing to put the financial survival of 77,000 unemployed South Carolinians on the line in order to win a pissing match, has demonstrated himself to be the worst sort of Republican- more focused on Conservative doctrine and his own ego than in the well-being of those who he was elected to lead and serve. Not that Sanford has probably ever had to worry about paying the mortgage or keeping the electricity on or making sure he can feed his family. No, Sanford is a textbook example of why the 2008 election cycle resulted in the GOP being cast into the wilderness, as it were. When a politician's idea of leadership is playing chicken with the lives and livelihoods of struggling families, he (or she) has forfeited the right to lead.
Mr. Sanford once carried two piglets onto the floor of the House chamber to symbolize his opposition to what he considered wasteful spending. One of the piglets promptly defecated; lawmakers were not amused. Indeed, though Republicans dominate both chambers, they have overriden hundreds of his vetoes on spending over the years, including, in one recent session, money to expand children's health insurance, indigent defense, and to provide cost-of-living adjustments for retired state employees.
After one special session last year, the legislators overrode 228 out of 243 of the governor's vetoes, restoring money Mr. Sanford had rejected for H.I.V. prevention and health programs, and for state parks and beach reconstruction.
Mark Sanford has never really been about the people of South Carolina, anyway. More than anything, he's been a mean-spirited Republican careerist more interested in ideology and doctrine than the nuts and bolts of governing- part of which involves ensuring that the people he represents have a safety net in case the party he belongs to happens to push the economy into the crapper...sort of like what's happening right now.
The problem, of course, is that Sanford takes his ideological rectitude to levels even his own party can't support. Most Republicans realize that when you're talking about the well-being of real people, doing the right thing means doing the right thing instead of insisting on rigid ideological probity.
To be sure, part of the blame for this situation rests squarely on the shoulders of the sheeple of South Carolina. They did, after all, elect this cretin, and if they'd bothered to pay attention they would have recognized what they were getting- a self-absorbed Conservative ideologue who doesn't give a flying (&^% about the people he was elected to serve.
Then again, it would appear that the sheeple of South Carolina got exactly the quality of leadership they deserve.
