Sanford Takes Me to Sunday School

South Carolina's Governor Mark Sanford announced two great epiphanies today: why he should not resign (gosh, we thought he was going to) and why his fellow South Carolina Republicans would not cooperate with him the last few years (no, it's not why you think).

In a message posted on his website and on Facebook, Governor Mark Sanford, Chief Carolina Moralist (Retired) had these enlightened things to say:

1. God wants him to remain governor: "Immediately after all this unfolded last week I had thought I would resign -- as I believe in the military model of leadership and when trust of any form is broken one lays down the sword...[but] for God to really work in my life I shouldn't be getting off so lightly."

2. That woman is the reason his own Republicans turned against him over the last several years (not weeks): "I may well have held the right position on limited government, spending or taxes -- but that if my spirit wasn't right in the presentation of those ideas to people in the General Assembly, or elsewhere, I could elicit the response that I had at many times indeed gotten from other state leaders."

So let's get this right. Sanford blames his inability to convince his fellow South Carolina Republicans, who control the state legislature, on his tainted spirit? That Argentinian Eve offered him the apple and derailed him and his true conservative agenda against the Palmetto State's governing GOP majority?

I guess he thinks some warped version of a tax-cutting, country club Jesus would have gotten Sanford's agenda through the stubborn South Carolina GOP legislature. We all know that Sanford's so-called Christian agenda -- pulling away a helping hand to the poor, rejecting support for those out of work, gutting universal public education in favor of private education only for a few, supporting pre-emptive war, and excusing "enhanced interrogation" -- was right out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Problem is, I just don't know which one.

Must have missed that day in Sunday school in Columbia, SC, where I grew up.

When I'm back home this weekend I'm gonna ask my preacher where the darkness came from.

Comments

[Elfpower]

What Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign did in their personal lives is not a concern for the rest of the country. The fact that they were so vocal on moral issues for the rest of America while each was violating his own marriage is an issue, and should be a lesson for others.

Thomas Jefferson wrote his own version of the New Testament entitled: “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” In a letter describing this work to his friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, he stated:

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others, or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the right of independent opinion by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.

This is sound advice, and should be heeded by anyone that is tempted to judge the moral code of others.

[caphillprof]

Utter nonsense. Sanford and Ensign are hypocrites. They ran on their picture perfect families, the oppose gay marriage and their personal family values are utter shams.

Until they get out of my bedroom, and leave the wife and kids at home on the campaign trail, then, maybe then, I'll leave them to their own immorality.