37 reasons to impeach Mark Sanford ignored by Republicans

It looks like Mark Sanford, the philandering Republican governor of South Carolina, is set to escape the clutches of impeachment for now. A subcommittee in the Palmetto State’s House of Representatives voted 6-1 against recommending an impeachment resolution, although they did vote to censure Sanford:

The seven-member panel, instead, voted unanimously to censure Sanford, which means the General Assembly would admonish Sanford for his behavior. But, Sanford would get to serve the rest of his term, which has roughly one year remaining.

Lawmakers said that while Sanford may have used a 2008 Argentina trade trip as a cover to initiate an extramarital affair and that his use of state aircraft deserved an S.C. Ethics Commission review, the charges did not meet the high standard they felt was necessary to remove Sanford from office.

The panel, on a 6-1 vote, gave the bill an unfavorable report to the full Judiciary committee. The only vote in support was Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, one of four sponsors.

Delleney said he will try to convince Judiciary committee members to vote in favor next week, but was not optimistic.

via Impeach Sanford? No, committee majority says – Breaking News – TheState.com.

It’s a pretty shocking turn around. Governor Sanford not only effectively walked off the job without informing his staff to visit a woman in another country with whom he was having an affair. He’s also been charged with 37 infractions of South Carolina ethics rules. While the House committee that has said it will not vote to recommend Sanford’s impeachment dismissed 28 of the charges for not being ’serious crimes,’ that leaves 9 charges outstanding, including the charge that he basically faked a ‘trade promotion’ trip to South America on the state’s dime to see his lover.

Sadly, the GOP on a nationwide basis appears to be taking a see-no-evil/hear-no-evil approach to Sanford. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele dismissed Sanford (as well as similarly-troubled Senator John Ensign) as “old news, old school.” More than that, Steele stated outright that it’s up to South Carolina’s electeds to decide whether or not Sanford should finish his term.

That’s not a wise path for a party that’s trying to win back a majority in either house of Congress in 2010. Sanford wasn’t simply a random Republican governor, he was the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, a powerful body in the party’s political infrastructure. Democrats can point to the Illinois legislature’s rapid impeachment of fameball Rod Blagojevich as evidence that they deal harshly with their party’s errant lawbreakers. Thus Mark Sanford finishing his term into 2010 can be used strongly against the GOP on a national basis.

Instead, the party would be better served by pressuring Sanford, and his supporters in the Palmetto State, to stand down.

Republicans don’t deserve to be the nation’s corruption-busters three years after Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea, but a number of factors have contributed to their transformation into the party of clean government. Between public anger over the stimulus and bank bail-outs, the taint of industry influence in the health care reform debate, the Andrew Breitbart-inflicted travails of ACORN, Blago’s attempt to transform President Obama’s Senate seat into his golden parachute, and Charlie Rangel clinging to his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in spite of major tax failings, Democrats have been dinged on quite a few ethics and corruption issues throughout 2009. That’s why recent polling shows that more Americans trust Republicans on government ethics than Democrats.

But it’s not just that some Democrats have been doing bad. Republicans running on the claim that they will clean up government also saw their fortunes grow in the 2009 elections. Governor-elect Chris Christie triumphed in part in New Jersey because of his aggressive public corruption prosecutions as US Attorney. A CNN exit poll showed that 20% of Jersey voters considered corruption to be the most important issue in the state, and 68% of that slice voted for Christie. Bob McDonnell in Virginia made government reform a component of his pitch for office, and being an effective attorney general certainly didn’t hurt his prospects as he headed into his wildly successful campaign against Creigh Deeds.

Christie and McDonnell’s campaign experience shows that taking a feeling of corruption and turning it into a positive – i.e. they were actively fighting fraud, corruption, and waste – is a constructive message on which to build a political campaign. In contrast, Democratic lawmakers at the national level accused of wrongdoing are referred to slow-moving ethics committees that can’t seem to get the lead out in resolving claims of corruption.

But with Sanford, Democrats will have a powerful stand-in for alleging a see-no-evil/hear-no-evil approach to corruption by their Republican opponents. His spin-doctoring attorneys have made the case that many of the 37 charges were just ‘technical’ violations of the law. Meanwhile, with the state House committee set to reject impeachment, the state’s prosecutors or its ethics panel may still be able to take additional action against the Governor, possibly prolonging the public case against him through the 2010 campaigns. If Republicans leave the ball on the field, Democrats may just pick it up and start playing their own game with it. Consider yourselves warned.