Conservative Bloggers Split on Sanford

by sensico

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 06:10 PM EDT

Today it came out the Sanford actually had encounters with more females then he admitted during his “shocking” press conference last week. During an AP interview he said that he “crossed lines” with other women. He also stated that it never went too far and that he actually loved Maria Belen Chapur.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that he “crossed lines” with a handful of women other than his mistress — but never had sex with them.

The governor said he “never crossed the ultimate line” with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed his once-promising political career.

“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Before Sanford admitted this he was being compared with other politicians like Spitzer. The argument was whether or not Sanford’s actions could be forgivable because he actually loved the woman he was cheating with. Spitzer was overheard saying, in an effort to slam Sanford, “I didn’t fall in love with any of them”. Whether he did love Maria or not is really irrelevant when discussing politics and I’m sure his wife could care less.

Conservatives have come out condemning Sanford, in not only an effort to do whats right. It may be politically smart to condemn Sandford. Even though Sanford is a republican, if conservatives continue to hit at Sanford then he could look like a lone wolf and some might not even see the hypocrisy trend amongst many high profile conservatives that cheat. We can all say that this is a bipartisan issue, but democrats for the most part don’t go around impeaching or using politician’s affairs as a means to score political points. This interesting tidbit on The Hill seems to make me question conservative outrage when some state that they would rather vote for an atheist then Sanford stay in office.

The conservative website surveyed 260 right wing bloggers and found some interesting results. Fifty-three percent said Sanford should resign since admitting he had an extramarital affair, while nearly 47 percent said he shouldn’t.

And religion, or at least a belief in God, isn’t a major criteria in a presidential candidate for conservative bloggers. Two thirds said they would support an atheist.

There were some questions where there was near unanimity. More than nine in 10 said they don’t believe man made global warming is occurring right now.

And a strong majority – 80 percent – support groups like the Club for Growth that encourage conservatives challengers to take on Republican incumbents who are not conservative enough.

Conservative are obviously split on whether he should resign. But, I find it hard to believe that if they had a choice between Sanford and a decent atheist candidate, that they would vote for an atheist. I think we all know the reason why as conservatives in general have been ignorant towards the atheist demographic. Maybe conservative bloggers are a different breed of conservative but I find that part of the survey to be a little untrue from these bloggers, as well as a little overboard.

In my opinion, it doesn’t matter whether or not Sanford resigns. He doesn’t have that much time in office and the damage has already been done. Sanford might have gotten some slack for showing his human side during the last press conference, but he gets no love for going on a cheating spree with several women. Sanford continues to dig himself a hole and most likely just admitted that he has not only cheated on his wife Jenny, but possibly on his mistress, Maria. Either way, there’s little talk of South Carolina conservatives impeaching Sanford and there’s little chance that Sanford will resign. The loudest of conservatives may appear to be highly upset about this and want him to resign but talk is cheap when there’s no effort to actually get him out of office.

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