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.”

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.

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.

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)

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.

Watch it:

Transcript:

BAIER: but Byron, what about this story and how strange it has been?

BYRON YORK, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON EXAMINER : Well, I think he’s toast. It’s been a bizarre scene over the last week.

South Carolina has just been a hotbed of rumors. I talked to someone in South Carolina a few days ago and said What’s going on? And they said, well, the theory is it’s either a Susan Boyle-type breakdown or another woman, or maybe both. And it seems to have kind of been both.

He has a large group of social conservatives in South Carolina who never loved him all that much who are very upset about this.

A reconciliation, a public reconciliation with his wife would be very popular with them, but the wife released a statement today saying that she had actually thrown him out a couple of weeks ago, and as part of that arrangement, he was not supposed to get in touch with the family, and thus when he disappeared, went AWOL, she didn’t know where he was.

All of this stuff looks really bad, and a number of Republicans in South Carolina are saying this does not look good for him.

BAIER: And Mort, he was at one time considered to be in the running for 2012.

MORT KONDRACKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL : I thought he was going to be the leading right wing candidate, and he was setting himself up to do that by refusing the $700 million from the stimulus package and all that. It raised his profile among Republicans.

But look, multiple affairs did not stop Bill Clinton from being elected president, but that’s because the Democratic Party is a lot more tolerant of licentiousness than the Republican Party is, and that’s the rub for poor old Mark Sanford here.

You know, he — this, plus John Ensign’s disclosure last week –

BAIER: Senator from Nevada.

KONDRACKE: Nevada — that he had an illicit affair is good news for Mitt Romney, for Bobby Jindal, for Pawlenty of Minnesota, for all the other candidates who might be running in 2012.

BAIER: Charles?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I would agree. I think he is toast politically.

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.

And the idea that he could actually have an affair in Argentina as an acting governor is sort of insane. If you go to Argentina, you have to have your passport stamped. You can’t hide it.

I don’t want to play psychiatrist on the show every night. However, the oddity of this and the self-destructiveness would suggest even to a layman that this is a near intentional political suicide.

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)

I don’t want him to resign because of the affair. I think he should get kicked out of office because he’s been a terrible governor for the state. Their unemployment rate is at its highest rate ever. He’s bankrupted the state. He’s been fighting the Obama administration over unemployment money that his constituents desperately need. So I think on the merits, he’s been a horrible governor.

Faiz also reminded hosts David Shuster and Tamron Hall of Sanford’s own characterization of lying as “the biggest harm…to the democratic system.” Watch it:

After the segment, Hall said Faiz “made a great point” about Sanford’s past statements. “When people can use your own words, and you’ve criticized people in that same position, that bites I think more than anything any other critic or analyst can say about you,” Hall said.

Before:

After:

As the New York Times notes, the press conference “began rather oddly, with Mr. Sanford rambling about his love for the Appalachian trail, his exhaustion from a legislative battle over the federal stimulus and a need to get away from the public eye.” Sanford, who is married and has four children, eventually admitted that he has been having an affair with an Argentine woman. He also announced that he would be resigning as head of the Republican Governors Association. Watch it:

While serving as a U.S. congressman, Sanford was incredibly critical of his colleagues’ marital misdeeds, including the affairs of former congressman Bob Livingston and President Bill Clinton:

“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. He lied under a different oath, and that is the oath to his wife. So it’s got to be taken very, very seriously.” [Sanford on Livingston, CNN, 12/18/98]

“We ought to ask questions…rather than circle the wagons for one of our tribe.” [Sanford on how the GOP reacts to affairs, New York Post, 12/20/98]

“I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign). I come from the business side. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.” [Sanford on Clinton, The Post and Courier, 9/12/98]

“The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of Democratic government, representatives government, because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything.” [Sanford on Clinton, CNN, 2/16/99]

Sanford has also been an opponent of same-sex marriage, saying in 2004, “As Jenny and I are the parents of four little boys, we’ve always taught our kids that marriage was something between a man and a woman.” [The Post and Courier, 2/11/04]

Then, at 10:01 p.m. Monday, [Communications Director Joel] Sawyer e-mailed reporters an update: “The governor is hiking along the Appalachian Trail. I apologize for taking so long to send this update, and was waiting to see if a more definitive idea of what part of the Trail he was on before we did so.”

Sawyer said Sanford was hiking “to kind of clear his head after the legislative session.” He added emphatically, “[Sanford's] an avid outdoorsman.”

On Tuesday morning, Sawyer said that Sanford had “called to check in with his chief of staff.” Yet he stuck with his claim that Sanford was hiking.

It turns out, however, that Sawyer was lying. This morning, reporters from The State caught up with Sanford at Atlanta’s Hartsville-Jackson International Airport, where he had just returned from a seven day trip to Beunos Aires, Argentina — nowhere near the Appalachian Trial. Sanford refused to say what he had been doing in South America, and offered no explanation for why his staff lied:

Sanford, in an exclusive interview with The State Media Company, said he decided at the last minute to go to the South American country to recharge after a difficult legislative session in which he battled with lawmakers over how to spend federal stimulus money.

Sanford said he had considered hiking on the Appalachian Trail, an activity he said he has enjoyed since he was a high school student. “But I said ‘no’ I wanted to do something exotic,” Sanford said “… It’s a great city.” [...]

Sanford said he was alone on the trip. He declined to give any additional details about what he did other than to say he drove along the coastline. … When asked why his staff said he was on the Appalachian Trail, Sanford replied, “I don’t know.”

Last night, South Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R) explained that during Sanford’s week-long vacation out of the country, Sanford never transferred executive authority, and that Sanford’s staff refused to tell Bauer where the governor was. “If another emergency were at hand right now, we don’t have a way to contact our governor, and so that concerns me,” he said.

BECK: Can you vouch for his character, that he is what he seems to be?

DEMINT: He always has been up front with me, but, you know, who knows? I don’t know if we can vouch for each other’s character, but he is a good friend of mine and obviously I hope he is okay.

Watch it:

This morning, Sanford’s office declared that the governor was “hiking” on the Appalachian Trail, and would be back in the office tomorrow. However, NBC’s Greenville, SC affiliate is reporting that “a federal agent spotted Sanford in the [Atlanta] airport boarding a plane,” and that a missing state vehicle — presumably the car Sanford took — was found at the Atlanta airport as well.

To defend his grandstanding, Sanford has previously lashed out at his critics, saying it would be tantamount to “fiscal child abuse” to accept the federal money. He has also compared President Obama to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, because of his fiscal policies. But now Sanford is taking his hyperbolic rhetoric to another level, claiming that the stimulus will result in “a thing called slavery”:

SANFORD: A guy from the northeast did a study on generational accounting. Generational accounting says what is the imputed tax for a young person born in America today? And remarkably, that number is 82, which at all ain’t that far from a thing called slavery. If you’re giving away 82% of every dollar you earn every day and every week and every month, A, it’s not a good deal, B, it collapses the capitalistic system because nobody has any initiative to work at that point, and C, it really isn’t that far from slavery. And what the Republic was originally set up was on the notion that was just talked about a moment ago, which is this larger notion of freedom. And economic freedom is a part of the larger notion of freedom.

Watch it:

Sanford’s comments echo the right-wing meme that nearly every policy President Obama pursues, whether it is the stimulus or his national service plan, is a covert plan to enslave Americans. President Bush’s $1.3 trillion — deficit enlarging — tax cut certainly did not elicit the same hysterical response from Sanford.

Sanford claimed that the nation was founded on “freedom” as opposed to slavery. But that view reveals either a profound ignorance of American and South Carolinian history, or, at worst, is an example of Sanford casually rewriting of the past.

Not only did the nation’s founding documents acknowledge and perpetuate slavery, but South Carolina has a particularly grisly record on the practice. Under the state Constitution of 1790, white men were required to own 500 acres of land and ten slaves to be eligible for the state House of Representatives, and double that to be eligible for the Senate. Author William Dusinberre has described South Carolina as a “charnel house” among other slave states, noting that over fifty five percent of slaves on rice plantations died before the age of fifteen. In addition to brutality from their masters, the deaths were a result of a combination of malaria and infants’ feebleness at birth, which was caused by the mothers’ own chronic malaria and their general exhaustion from rice cultivation during pregnancy.

TAPPER: What’s your view on the prominent that Vice President Cheney has created for himself?

SANFORD: I’d say the beauty of America is, you know, it’s everybody’s prerogative. So if that’s his thing, you know, go for it.

TAPPER: But is it good for your party?

SANFORD: Probably isn’t. … You know, while somebody may have been at the top at one point, to really keep an invigorated political system, you’ve got to have new voices stepping in and stepping to the plate and giving their opinions. And any time you have some of the senior leaders continuing to lay out their case for what they believe, it probably usurps the voice of new leaders coming in.

When Tapper asked Sanford how he felt about Rush Limbaugh, Sanford suggested that Limbaugh was one of the leaders “who have had more than their share of time at a front-row seat.” “If you’ve got a disproportionate microphone, you might want to share it,” Sanford said. Listen to it:

The S.C. Supreme Court also took the rare step of issuing a writ of mandamus, which orders the governor to apply for the money. [...]

As for issuing the writ of mandamus, the other four justices said that “while we recognize and respect Governor Sanford’s sincerely held beliefs concerning (the federal law), those convictions do not alter the ministerial nature of the legal duty now before him.”

The justices added that the decision to issue a writ is “an extremely delicate one.”

$185 million will go to K-12 education this year, on July 1, and $100 million will go to state colleges. “I’m very excited that our schools and our teachers and our education system will be getting the funds that are so desperately needed here in South Carolina, and I’m glad the court case went our way,” said 18-year-old South Carolina student Casey Edwards, who filed the lawsuit.

Yet denying his state needed stimulus funds is just the start of Sanford’s recent highly partisan moves. Yesterday, ThinkProgress reported that Sanford had refused to join a national school reform effort to set curriculum standards. Sanford claimed that he refused to sign on because the “governor does not have a role in implementing education policy.”

Now the governor has taken action on two bills that show where his priorities really lie: He vetoed a bill reigning in predatory payday lending, and signed a bill allowing loaded guns on school grounds.

Reinforcing his ideological approach, Sanford claimed that regulating payday loans was incompatible with “limited government and maximized individual freedom.” State Sen. Joel Lourie (D) replied, “His vision for South Carolina is for ineffective, underfunded schools, for kids buying cheap cigarettes and for unprotected consumers.”

The gun law Sanford signed allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to leave a gun in their car while parked at a school so that, according to the bill’s sponsor, teachers can more fully exercise their rights:

“I’m not trying to bring firearms inside the school,” said [Sen. Shane] Martin, R-Spartanburg. “You don’t need to carry it inside the school. But I’ve had teachers tell me they can’t exercise their (Second Amendment) rights traveling to and from school. They ought to be able to travel to school without having to leave their weapon.”

So while Sanford refuses to fix crumbling schools or prevent thousands of teacher layoffs or crack down on some of the most predatory lending practices around, he was willing to join a freshman senator’s “grand gesture” to the NRA. It must be more of that “reform” Sanford has trumpeted.

SANFORD: [W]hat we looked at was if you spend every dime of this thing, we’re not going to make some reforms that are absolutely essential to South Carolina becoming more competitive going forward. And I could give you a laundry list of other reasons why we laid out the position that we did. [...]

PILGRIM: This is such a hard position to take, such a responsible position to take. … Well, we commend you for the tough position you’ve taken and you defend it well.

Watch it:

Sanford’s decision to partially reject the stimulus funding has put thousands of teacher and other public servant jobs at risk. The “mixed” reaction to Sanford’s decision has resulted in public protests, criticism from the state legislature, a public rebuke from President Obama, and a lawsuit by an 18-year-old high-school student.

On Morning Joe today, CNBC’s Donny Deutsch pointedly questioned Sanford, arguing that his ideological decision could increase class sizes because teachers will be fired. Sanford admitted that education was important but in effect said he wasn’t willing to allocate new funds for it. He said the legislature should find school funding elsewhere in the budget:

DEUTSCH: Ideology is all great, but let’s pretend I’m a dad and I’m living in South Carolina. A lot of that money is earmarked for education. If you don’t take that money because of your point of view and my kid — there are less teachers, the tuition for the state schools go up, and education is really affected — this is not just in theory, this is reality. What do you say to me as a dad that I’m worried about my kid in a state that has very poor education records?

SANFORD: Yeah, but here’s the bottom line. What this tug of war is really about is reform within South Carolina. … It’s only in these kind of economic times that you can make the changes that are essential, frankly, to South Carolina being more competitive. So our view is, no, we could make some changes that created the dollars that could then be allocated to education and other things.

Host Joe Scarborough cheered Sanford throughout the interview, cutting off Deutsch’s tough questionning and ending the segment by declaring that he wanted Sanford to run for president. Watch it:

Sanford claims he’s simply putting “some pressure within the boiling pot” to force “reforms” to the budget to pay for schools. However, the “Major Expenditure Categories” in South Carolina’s budget are K-12 education, Medicaid, social services and corrections, higher education scholarships, and state employee health plans. It’s fair to assume, therefore, that Sanford’s ideological battle will force the legislature to choose between cutting social services and health care, or funding the state’s schools.

After the interview, Scarborough went further in his defense of Sanford, saying it doesn’t matter if Sanford denies needed funding for schools because a student in South Carolina “gets more money than students across the planet, because [he] lives in America.” The more relevant fact, however, is that a student in South Carolina is at a serious disadvantage compared to other American children. According to census data from 2006, South Carolina ranks 34th in state spending per pupil, and 32nd in spending overall (including federal funds).

BECK: But your point, if I’m not mistaken is, no, no, no, you’re taking care of the children in South Carolina by not taking it. Can you explain that? [...]

SANFORD: Since we don’t have any of this money that’s now being dispensed from Washington, DC; since we’re going out and printing money and we’re issuing debt to solve a problem that was created by too much debt; since that’s taking place, and since those costs will be borne by the next generation, in fact it is sort of fiscal child abuse to do what we’re doing.

BECK: Yes.

Watch it:

It’s unclear whether South Carolina student Ty’Sheoma Bethea will agree that denying her crumbling school the stimulus cash it needs to rebuild — or that firing 4,000 state teachers — is protecting her from child abuse.

Five days before the deadline for accepting the stimulus funds, and as criticism of him escalates, Sanford gave a speech yesterday outlining a new “compromise” proposal: He’ll accept the $700 million but demand that the state legislature find other state funds to pay off the debt. In other words, You accept my neo-Hooverite approach of cutting spending in a deep recession:

Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed a compromise with state lawmakers over accepting $700 million in federal stimulus money — one that would require diverting state funds to pay off debt and accepting Sanford’s suggested budget savings. [...]

Sanford wants:

• Lawmakers to approve $270 million in cuts Sanford included in his executive budget and to spend that money on debt.

• Lawmakers to find $70 million more over the next two years and to spend it on debt.

Sanford noted lawmakers have about $220 million in extra health-care funds — money the House spread throughout its $6.6 billion spending plan — to make up the difference. Paying off debt would save $80 million in each of the next two years, he said.

Sanford is hoping to have his cake and eat it too: accepting stimulus funds with his right hand while paying down the debt — the debt his disastrous tax cuts created — with his left hand. In the end, though, it’s the same pot of money, and forcing the state to pay down the debt means forcing cuts that could have disastrous consequences for South Carolinians.

Sanford’s fuzzy math wouldn’t change the budget cuts to education that state officials say could mean between 4,000 and 7,500 teachers will be fired. And since Sanford is still refusing the stimulus funds — unless his “compromise” is agreed to — the state Senate Finance Committee was forced to rewrite the budget yesterday stripping $368 million away, which “would translate to $161 million in cuts to K-12 education agencies, $103 million to the state’s Medicaid and health agencies, $44 million to higher education and $39 million to prisons and law enforcement.”

Indeed, Sanford’s compromise is a hollow one. Local news reported that the governor told audiences yesterday that he “remains firm in his belief that stimulus funds should be used to pay down debt or not used at all.” He also dismissed worries of teacher layoffs as “a farce” an a “game of chicken”, even as he faced protesters worried about education. Watch a short compilation: