Over at RS we have a writeup of a blogger conference call with Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. It was the first blogger call he’d done, and was a pretty informal 45-minute chat.
If the GOP is going to renew itself, Republican governors will need to play a major role. Fortunately, we have some good ones. Several of us from RedState participated in a blogger call with one of the best, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford.
Gov. Sanford, best known as a critic of excessive government spending, is leaving office in 2010 due to term limits, and there is plenty of speculation that the two-term Governor and former three-term Congressman will run for the presidency in 2012. Like all potential candidates, he’s been coy about the speculation. For now, he has his hands full governing; all eyes are on a budget battle that will come to a head with a vote in the legislature next week on his plan to use federal stimulus funds to pay down state debt (Newsweek has a look at Sanford’s view of this battle here).
My own summary of the call:
First of all, if you haven’t watched Gov. Sanford in action, I’d recommend you go back to this post from last summer, where I collected video clips of his appearances. On the call he was much the same as you’ll see him there: he exudes a sort of relaxed maturity, he knows his stuff (he endured a lengthy grilling by Francis about the state’s debt structure), he’s a great believer in frugal financial management and an apostle of competitiveness, and he’s unwavering on his conservative principles. He made specific reference to this Daniel Henninger piece and Dick Cheney’s comment that rebranding the GOP should not involve repositioning our principles. That said, he expressed interest in using calls like this as part of the process of outreach to new media and finding better ways to communicate our message.
Gov. Sanford has been facing serious opposition back home to his debt-service plan, and he’s realistic about the possibility that he may lose the initial vote in the legislature, but takes the view that it’s “inconceivable that somebody isn’t going to blink” – and the implicit message is, it won’t be him. He’s insistent that if the state doesn’t pay down debt, if it accepts the stimulus money and spends it, South Carolina will be in a $740 million hole two years from now. In his view, paying down debt and cutting back expenses is the responsible thing to do in tough times – he recounted a conversation with an editorial writer who assured him that the economy would be fine in two years, but admitted that if it isn’t “we’re toast.” He was incredulous that anybody with responsibility for the state’s finances could accept a plan that leaves that as an option. As he noted, quoting a book of the same title, “hope is not a method.”
But while he recognizes that “advertising works and matters,” he’s not backing down; he draws inspiration from the energy of the tea party movement, noting that he’s seeing energy out there he hasn’t seen in 15 years in politics. As he put it, sometimes you wonder if you are a “lonely island” – “Am I on my own? Am I a crazy man?” – and then you go to an event (he’s been to four) with 8,000 people in Greenville and see you are not alone, even if the taxpayer groups are “not as plaintive before government as some of the other advocacy groups out there.”
Gov. Sanford has some real challenges ahead. As he noted, South Carolina is unique among the 50 states in having many of the executive’s usual budgetary prerogatives in the hands of a legislative council, the Budget Control Board, a fact that explains a lot about the state’s debt burden and is why Sanford has had to resort to occasional publicity stunts like the famous one pictured above, where he brought pigs to the statehouse to protest pork-barrel spending. He explained to us that he’s faced legislative opposition to easy cost-cutting moves like trying to privatize a state golf course that loses $500,000 a year in a state overflowing with profitable golf courses. He noted rather ruefully that he’d had success getting the state to privatize a bait and tackle business, but that only “saved peanuts.”
I hadn’t thought much beyond the immediate implications of the gov’s stance here in SC, but I agree with Brian that Sanford needs to choose his next move carefully, if he has any aspirations in 2012. Someone has to stand up against this idiocy, but the effects of “stimulus” could either favor Sanford’s defiance or hang him.