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.