Stick A Fork In Him

The South Carolina GOP just abandoned Mark Sanford.

The tide of support from his own Republican Party officially turned against disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford Thursday as the South Carolina GOP called for his resignation.

South Carolina Republican Chairman Karen Floyd and the state party’s executive committee held a 5 p.m. conference call before announcing that they had decided it was time for Sanford to go.

SCGOP spokesman Ryan Meerstein said over two-thirds of those voting favored the governor’s resignation. He added that a letter from Floyd to the governor would be released later in the evening.

That's pretty much it. They say that in politics, if you're explaining, you're losing, and I would say this ridiculously long letter from Sanford's website represents a whole lot of explaining, including the measuring of hours logged on state planed by past Governors. He held a companion press conference today, too. The funniest part of all this is that Sanford, the ultimate conservative's conservative, is being taken down for profligate personal spending, and his facts and figured thrown up to defend himself just don't cut it. That's of course because the forced resignation on these uses of state travel expenses are a sideshow, cover for the SC GOP to just dump him because they fear a backlash from their "family values" base.

Quitter States "I Am Not A Quitter," Invents Non-Existent Federal Agency

Sarah Palin decided she needed some damage control, so she delivered a series of interviews to the press (I thought they were the problem?), which included statements like this:

Sarah Palin's not a quitter, she wants the public to know.

"I am not a quitter. I am a fighter," Palin told CNN on Monday while on a family fishing trip, on the heels of her Friday bombshell announcement that she was resigning as Alaska's governor.

Palin did her interview standing on the shores of Dillingham, Alaska, wearing hip waders. She granted 10-minute interviews to CNN and three other news networks Monday.

She resigned because of the tremendous pressure, time and financial burden of a litany of ethics complaints in the past several months, she said. The complaints were without merit and took away from the job she wanted to do for Alaskans, Palin said.

Like Kevin Drum I'm willing to believe that she's sincere about this, that she couldn't take the pressure and the time and the cost of all the ethics complaints. At the same time, that means she CAN'T HANDLE BEING A POLITICIAN, then. Which is fine, there are only a handful of politicians governing hundreds of millions, in the final analysis. It does take a toll. Her lawyer said "she needed a break" after being on-duty for two and a half straight years. OK, fine. Then don't run for public office.

ABC's Kate Snow probed that juxtaposition:

As to whether another pursuit for national office, as when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House less than a year ago, would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there was a difference between the White House and what she had experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

Should I even bother to comment?

Luckiest Man On Earth

Mark Sanford made his big announcement about walking the Appalachian Trail with a woman not his wife, and the next day Michael Jackson died. He gave maybe the biggest no-no of an interview to the AP, where he called his mistress his "soul-mate," and within a couple days the Quitta from Wasilla stepped up to the mic. At this rate, Sanford will strangle a bear cub live on South Carolina television, and the next day Osama bin Laden and Britney Spears will announce a secret wedding in Vegas. The guy has timing.

But while it's slipped off the radar nationally, locally in South Carolina the story continues. FWIW, Sanford doesn't want to resign.

After spending the holiday weekend with his family in Florida, Mark Sanford is apparently intent on fighting off calls for his resignation and staying in office, according to one South Carolina Republican who spoke with the governor on Monday.

Richard Yow, a member of the South Carolina Republican Party executive committee from Chesterfield County, received a phone call from Sanford on Monday afternoon. Yow said he spoke to the embattled governor for ten minutes, during which Sanford asked Yow for his forgiveness.

Yow said he told Sanford he could forgive him, but he told the governor that he should resign for the sake of the state and his family. Sanford, he said, rejected the idea.

"He said resigning would be the easy way out," Yow told CNN.

There's a conference call for the South Carolina Republican Party to decide on a formal response to the Sanford troubles. That could range anywhere from a show of support to a formal call for resignation. It's really anyone's guess.

Something's Up

I tried to sit down and read Sarah Palin's resignation speech. Sometimes when you say something like "the politician clearly wrote the speech themselves" that's a compliment. Not in this case. As Ezra notes, this is just a bizarre thing to allow into a TelePrompTer.

I've read a lot of speech transcripts. They tend to have fewer words in all capital letters. And fewer things in quotation marks that aren't actually, you know, quotes. And I've never seen an official speech transcript, written by an actual speechwriter, that contains this:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*

And that's not even getting into the self-pitying shots at the press, the fact that she mocked those who take "the quitter's way out" in a speech dedicated to quitting, or this agonizing sports metaphor:

"A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory."

This had the quality of a written-the-night-before book report. At the least, it was not the product of carefully crafted deliberation.

This is a reactive document based on some new information about to come to light.