After Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced the Republican budget that would end Medicare and extend tax breaks for the wealthy, public backlash was swift. Constituent anger erupted at town halls across the country and polling showed the Republican plan hugely unpopular, even among GOP voters. The budget is so toxic that the leading Republican presidential contenders, including Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich, have steadfastly refused to endorse it.

Even GOPers are now admitting that the House Republicans’ agenda will end up costing thm seats in Congress. ThinkProgress recently spoke with former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford about what effect the Republican plan to end Medicare will have. Sanford singled out the upcoming New York 26th congressional district special election as one that Republicans may lose because of the Ryan budget, and conceded that his party would likely take “some losses” elsewhere as well. Still, the former governor argued that Ryan’s budget was “pioneering,” which necessarily “will involve losses”:

KEYES: You mentioned the NY-26 race. Do you think it would be worth it for Republicans to maybe lose a few of these races in pursuit of the ultimate goal of passing Ryan’s budget?

SANFORD: Yes. Everybody wants to play it safe in politics. But at the end of the day, you can only kick the can down the road so long. [...] Unless there’s entitlement reform, we’re going to see wheels start coming off the bus that would have again tragic implications for this generation and the next generation.

KEYES: If that’s the case, why do you suppose there might be these short-term losses for the GOP?

SANFORD: Because everybody’s scared of the unknown. They would say, back when I was in Congress, “there’s pioneers with arrows in their back.” And so nobody wants to pioneer on anything. But what is vital, particularly given the debt levels that we’re looking at, is that we see some pioneering. That will involve losses. Any real conflict will involve losses. In military operations and in politics. Too often, everybody wants to play it so safe that there are no losses and as a consequence, we end up kicking the can down the road. So my view would be, yeah, take some losses in advancing real ideas that will make a real difference in people’s lives rather than watering it down.

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Fearful of such losses, Republican leaders are beginning to back away from many tenets of the Ryan plan. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) said he would not hold hearings on Ryan’s budget. Multiple GOP senators, including Rob Portman (R-OH), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), and Susan Collins (R-ME) are backing off the Ryan plan as well.

Last year, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) led a group of governors in a high-profile war against President Obama’s stimulus package, claiming that accepting the $700 million for which his state was eligible would lead to “a thing called slavery” and was akin to “fiscal child abuse.” Sanford — who even went to court to resist taking the funds — and his cadre of governors “focused their ire, in particular, on provisions that pushed states to expand jobless benefits” to people who previously did not qualify for help, something Sanford “vow[ed] to reject.”

However, the New York Times reports that Sanford quietly broke this pledge and is now accepting stimulus funds to help his state’s out-of-work residents:

Two months ago, however, with the bright lights of political promise dimmed by a scandal involving an extramarital affair, Mr. Sanford quietly signed a bill passed by the Legislature that expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits. The move paved the way for the state to claim $97.5 million in stimulus money to bolster its financially ailing unemployment insurance trust fund.

The federal Department of Labor announced Tuesday that South Carolina had officially cleared its approval process and that the stimulus money was being released immediately.

The reversal by Mr. Sanford attracted virtually no notice, but it made South Carolina the 33rd state in the country to expand jobless benefits to qualify for its full share of stimulus money under the program, according to the National Employment Law Project, a liberal advocacy group.

While Sanford’s affair may have hurt his national political aspirations, it has almost certainly helped South Carolina residents, now that Sanford has set aside his personal ambitions to do what is right to help his state’s unemployed. The new federal money will help more than 17,000 South Carolinians who previously did not qualify for jobless benefits, such as part-time workers who were laid off, and “workers forced to leave a job because of an illness in the family or because a spouse moved.”

Govs. Dave Heineman (R-NE), Sonny Perdue (R-GA), and Phil Bredesen (D-TN) all also made similar vows not to take stimulus funds for jobless benefits, only to eventually relent.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) waged a high-profile war against the economic stimulus package last spring, claiming that accepting the $700 million for which his state was eligible would lead to “a thing called slavery.” Even as his state’s unemployment rate climbed above the national average, Sanford maintained his partisan and politically motivated refusal to take the funds.

But yesterday, Sanford flew to Washington to demand $300 million in stimulus money for education, the State newspaper reports:

Sanford, who spent much of last year fighting parts of the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, now wants S.C. to have a piece of $4 billion in “Race to the Top” education money. [...]

Sanford met with [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan to learn more about a charter school program Duncan started in Chicago, said Ben Fox, the governor’s spokesman. Sanford also took the trip to urge Duncan to support more charter school grants, Fox said. [...]

Sanford’s trip — which did not appear on his official calendar — is especially hypocritical because the majority of stimulus money destined for South Carolina was to fund education and save thousands of teachers’ jobs. Yet, in March, Sanford told Fox News host Glenn Beck that taking the money would be akin to “fiscal child abuse.”

Indeed, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said of Sanford’s trip: “I am pleased to see that the governor is finally taking an interest in South Carolina’s public schools.” “After going to court last year to prevent stimulus funds,” Clyburn added, “his meeting with Secretary Duncan appears to be the governor’s admission that the stimulus was not only necessary but effective.”

Sanford’s objection to taking stimulus education funding became especially poignant after eight-year-old South Carolinian Ty’Sheoma Bethea famously asked President Obama to fix her crumbling school. In June, the state Supreme Court finally ordered Sanford to take the $700 million and now, Bethea’s school is being rebuilt with $23.5 million of stimulus money.

Sanford’s opposition to taking the federal aid — which mirrored that of other high-profile GOP governors, like Bobby Jindal (R-LA) and Rick Perry (R-TX) — was viewed by many as an effort to lay the groundwork for a run for higher office. But after his affair dashed these hopes, Sanford seems to have gained a new interest doing what is right for his state’s students.

South Carolina state house Republicans are meeting this weekend to discuss “what it would take to force the Republican governor out and how the process would work.” Ever since acknowledging his extramarital affair with an Argentine woman, Gov. Mark Sanford has been under fire for possibly violating state law by flying in expensive business-class seats. Sanford has thus far refused to resign from office, forcing state Republicans to consider alternative means:

House Speaker Pro Tempore Harry Cato of Travelers Rest said he expects impeachment to “dominate” discussion at this weekend’s annual House GOP Caucus retreat in Myrtle Beach. […]

“I think just because of the general nature of how this outing always works, it’s usually dominated by one or two issues and I think impeachment will be the dominant issue,” he said.

“He left the state without anyone knowing where he was,” state Rep. Greg Delleney said, adding, “That was a dereliction of duty as far as I was concerned.” The state Constitution allows officials to be impeached for “serious crimes or serious misconduct in office.”

Yesterday, The State newspaper in South Carolina released emails obtained from disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R) office during the time of his mysterious disappearance last month. The emails showed that many in the right-wing media (the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Fox News) “tried to curry favor” with the governor’s office by dismissing the national media interest surrounding Sanford’s disappearance “as a storm in a teacup created by the liberal media.” Today, The State noted that Fox News’ ambush journalist Griff Jenkins was involved:

Another reporter, Griff Jenkins of Fox News, invited Sanford on to set the record straight.

“Having known the Governor for years and even worked with him when he would host radio shows for me,” Jenkins wrote to Sawyer on June 23, “I find the story and the media frenzy surrounding it to be absolutely ridiculous!”

ABC’s Jake Tapper was another, calling rival NBC’s reporting on Sanford “slimy” and “insulting.” He later forwarded a twitter post by NBC’s David Gregory to a Sanford aide, in which Gregory offered skepticism of Sanford’s storyline of where he was.

Commenting on Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-SC) extramarital affair with a woman from Argentina, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino writes in the National Review: “If the constant stream of these confessions by unfaithful husbands is any guide, we’ll be treated to more and more of these stories.” She then suggests an interesting solution:

While I am not able to explain, I do think I know the answer to all of this: Elect more women. No woman I know has the time for such trysts, nor do I know any who say the desire one. They’re too busy trying to keep all the plates spinning at home, at work, and at the gym to make sure none fall and break.

Right-wing anti-tax activist Grover Norquist had quite a different takeaway from the Sanford saga, suggesting that women might be the problem. “It does indicate that men who oppose federal spending at the local level are irresistible to women,” he said.

Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) was one of President Clinton’s harshest critics in the 1990s, an “impeachment ‘manager’ who attacked the moral failings of the president.” However, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Inglis says that while he has since recognized that nobody’s perfect, his party is still clinging to its “self-righteousness”:

But with his governor now felled by similar temptations, Inglis sees an opening for the Republican Party, a chance to “lose the stinking rot of self-righteousness” and “to understand we are all in need of some grace.”

This is not “Bob Inglis 1.0,” the one that was a “self-righteous” expletive, he said in an interview with Washington Wire today. [...]

Indeed, Sanford’s political fall could be a saving grace for what remains of his governorship, Inglis suggested. “This may be an opportunity to extend a little grace to other people, to realize that maybe it’s not 100% this way or that way,” Inglis said.

Inglis also said that while he voted against the stimulus package, he opposed Sanford’s decision to reject the funding. He said that he told the governor, “for goodness sake, take the money.” (HT: TPM)

Following the surprising news that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had an affair with a woman in Argentina, Fox News’ right-leaning “All-Stars” declared yesterday that Sanford’s political future is in serious trouble. “I think he’s toast,” said the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer agreed, saying “I think he is toast politically”:

KRAUTHAMMER: And resigning from the Republican Governors’ Association chairmanship is not going to do it, and the reason is that there is a dereliction of duty here. I know that’s the titillation of the reason for it, but even apart from that, he is the governor of the state.

The governor of the state is chief executive, and if there is a disaster in the state, and this guy is incommunicado, he is nowhere to be seen and he doesn’t transfer authority to his lieutenant governor who calls out the National Guard, you cannot recover from that. I think he doesn’t last a week in the office of governor.

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South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) didn’t just “let down a lot of people” when he spent the last week in Argentina with his mistress, he may have committed a crime.  Under South Carolina law:

Any man or woman who shall be guilty of the crime of adultery or fornication shall be liable to indictment and, on conviction, shall be severally punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than one year or by both fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court. . . .  “Adultery” is the living together and carnal intercourse with each other or habitual carnal intercourse with each other without living together of a man and woman when either is lawfully married to some other person.

Fortunately for Sanford, it is not entirely clear that the South Carolina justice system has jurisdiction over an apparent crime that he committed while traveling abroad in Argentina.  His lawyers might also argue that he cannot be convicted of criminal adultery because he and his Argentine lover were not engaged in “habitual carnal intercourse” — Sanford maintains that he only traveled to Argentina to see his mistress on rare occasions.

Nevertheless, Sanford himself explained at yesterday’s press conference that “God’s law indeed is there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that.”  As it turns out, Sanford may need to be more afraid of the consequences that stem from breaching the antiquated laws of South Carolina.

(HT: David Corn)