COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina legislator says he will introduce a resolution to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford when lawmakers return next week for a special session on unemployment benefits. Republican Rep. Greg Delleney said Tuesday he expects the measure will be sent to a committee and will get impeachment proceedings started. There are no plans for now for the full Legislature to take up impeachment before the regular session resumes in January. Leaders of the South Carolina Republican Party and 61 of 72 GOP House members who will deal with impeachment have called on their fellow Republican to resign. Delleney’s resolution says Sanford ignored his responsibilities to pursue an affair with an Argentine woman, tried to cover it up and embarrassed the state
Should South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford be impeached for leaving the State for five days without telling anyone where he was going and heading to see his girlfriend in Argentina? Or should South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford be impeached for lying to a reporter when he came back from Argentina, telling her that he was just traveling to let off steam? Or should South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford be impeached for the chronic misuse of State funds in his travels? Or should South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford be impeached for being an obligatory conservative whose ideology trumped his governance of the State he was elected to serve? Or should South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford be impeached for embarassing the State of South Carolina.
It seems to me that the reason doesn’t really matter. When a Governor of a State, has 61/72 [85%] of the Congressmen from his own Party asking him to resign, it’s probably time to go. The only force against impeachment that I know of is Sanford’s personal wish to finish out his term – like King David did. That’s not a very powerful force right now. There was a point along the way when he sounded suicidal to me, during one of his confused interviews. But lately he has sounded entitled and kind of mean – like trying to seal the ongoing ethics probe from the legislators.
Governor Sanford had all the forces in Washington and Columbia trying to help him not blow it, including his wife Jenny. They counseled, pandered, shepherded him to a goodbye session with Maria. They gave him every chance in the world to redirect his fate. And he chose to take off for Argentina thinking no one would figure out where he went. He said it was the power of love. What it sounded like was the power of specialness, narcissism, entitlement. Now, the honorable thing to do would be to step down himself [In case you don’t know, South Carolinians are big on honor]. The alternative is to be thrown out on his heels. Those seem to be his only choices…
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