Sanford Fired Blanks Throughout Stimulus Shootout

It goes without saying that S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford has advanced fiscally conservative positions throughout the protracted “stimulus showdown”  – certainly when compared to the positions taken by so-called “Republicans” in the S.C. General Assembly.

Oh, and positions taken by their “paid political appointees” on the State Supreme Court.

The reason for this disconnect is simple. Sanford is actually a fiscal conservative, whereas South Carolina’s GOP leaders (and their handpicked, bought-and-paid-for “Supremes”) are all nothing but big government Democrats in varying degrees of disguise.

Be that as it may, though, in this seemingly interminable fight to exercise control over roughly $700 million worth of federal “bureaucratic bailout” funds, the governor tragically misfired on multiple occasions – at key points in the debate.

In fact, Sanford fired blank after blank in attempting to define, defend (and derive political benefit from) his position on this disputed “stimulus” money – which thanks to a flood of taxpayer-funded propaganda came to represent the be-all, end-all of South Carolina’s political universe for nearly five months.

This, of course, despite the fact that it amounts to less than a tenth of the total “bureaucratic bailout” money South Carolina will receive, and represents an infinitesimally small 1.6% of the state’s $20.6 billion budget.

Frankly, in one of the worst economic years ever, you’d think a good politician would’ve been able to find a way to convince people that keeping that money out of government’s hands was not only bearable politically, but quite responsible given what individual taxpayers, families and small businesses are currently having to deal with.

Heck, Sanford had the crowd with him … particularly after a pro-taxpayer rally against the federal “stimulus” tripled the size of the taxpayer-funded pro-government rally held weeks earlier.

Also in his favor, the state’s attorney general ruled that Sanford had the sole discretion to request the disputed funds, an assessment most lawmakers (initially) concurred with.

Yet in this, the highest of high-stakes poker games – Sanford knew not when to hold ‘em, or when to fold ‘em.

He simply couldn’t play one of the few strong hands fate has ever dealt to his constitutionally-neutered office, which incidentally is about to have what’s left of its limited executive “manhood” snipped by the S.C. Supreme Court.

As a result, a golden opportunity for the taxpayers of South Carolina has fallen by the wayside, with severe repercussions on the office that Sanford will leave in twenty months to a new occupant.

SEEDS OF FAILURE

After taking months of intense political flak from enemies at all points along the political spectrum, the governor will limp off the “stimulus” battlefield later this week battered and bruised both at home and on the national stage.

That’s obviously a bitter pill to swallow for Sanford’s Beltway-based political consultant, Jon Lerner – who has been advising the governor every step of the way from his office up in Maryland.

Lerner – who has been pushing Sanford as a national candidate from the day the governor first took office back in 2003 – saw this fight as his coming-out party, a chance to position Sanford as a bona fide presidential candidate.

He also viewed it as a chance to correct his previous flops in advising the governor at the national level.

Like anyone compensating for past mistakes, Lerner frankly overdid it with Sanford. He made sure the governor was everywhere, granting network and cable TV interviews practically every five minutes in a dizzying blitzkrieg hoping to capitalize on the fact that Sanford was one of – and eventually the only governor to take a stand against the “bureaucratic bailout” dollars.

Sounds good, right? Free press?

Of course, once it came time to “walk the walk” and actually oppose the bailout hordes, Sanford stumbled badly. Perhaps not maliciously (and certainly not indefensibly from a fiscal purity standpoint), but badly nonetheless.

A big part of his administration’s unsteadiness stemmed from the simple fact that in Jon Lerner’s quest to make Mark Sanford a viable national commodity, he essentially wrote PR checks his wonkish candidate couldn’t cash.

With Lerner pulling the strings on the national stage, Sanford was being set up for a let down.

Simply put, the twin desires of favorable national positioning and continued popularity on the home front became difficult, and eventually impossible to co-manage.

Another unfortunate byproduct of the governor’s relentless courting of the national press? He completely lost the local media here in South Carolina. Look no further than a story written recently by local AP reporter Jim Davenport that blasted Sanford for hiring a campaign contributor to do pro bono work on the “stimulus” lawsuits.

Seriously, people. When you’re getting ripped on for saving taxpayer money by hiring a free lawyer, you know the press has bailed on you.

THE FIRST FUMBLE

With all of these seeds for failure planted, Sanford’s first critical misstep in this drama was, quite simply, the policy he choose to advance.

We’re referring, of course, to his commendable but politically indefensible position of requesting a “debt repayment waiver for non-programmatic funds” from the federal government.

In other words, Sanford’s stated desire for this particular pot of money was to pay down state debt, which of course has little demonstrable benefit to anyone outside of pencil pushers.

Nor surprisingly, this decision immediately opened the avenue for the incredibly-effective “if we don’t take it, other states will” argument.

That simple phrase – in a nutshell – is what lost the governor this fight.

Sure, taking the position he did landed Sanford in a highly-publicized spat with President Barack Obama (a fight his consultant had been dreaming of for months), but there’s literally no debating the fact that Sanford’s core “stimulus” argument was a political loser from the beginning.

He admitted as much himself on multiple occasions.

Not surprisingly, Sanford’s “debt repayment” gambit was a green light for lawmakers to take the money and run, which they did … never looking back.

Here’s an excerpt from our initial reaction to Sanford’s decision, published nearly three months ago:

So what did we think of Sanford’s response to the stimulus?

In a word? “Yawn.”

With so much build-up, we expected a lot more – like maybe an ordinance of secession or something.

Of course, it’s not so much that Sanford’s response was a “yawn,” it’s that the whole political exercise is a “yawn.”

First of all, Sanford only has “control” over $700 million out of the $2.8 billion in “stimulus” funds sent to S.C., and he technically doesn’t even have control over that.

Whatever Sanford does, the majority of GOP lawmakers are just going to override him.

Second of all, unless his plan was to direct deposit they money into the bank accounts of taxpayers who are going to have to pay it back one day, what’s the point?

If we were governor of South Carolina right now, we’d have either zipped our lips or done something completely crazy.

Our point?

If you know the odds are long, go all in.

Indeed, our proposed stimulus plan recommended essentially holding this money “hostage” unless lawmakers agreed to certain long-overdue reforms … like a spending cap, government restructuring and parental choice, to name a few.

And if they didn’t agree to those reforms?

In strip club parlance, we’d have “made it rain” on the taxpayers of South Carolina, sending them this controversial $700 million in the form of individual income tax cuts.

After all, if the federal government’s going to make all of us pay it back one day, we might as well pump it into the economy where it will get a much higher rate of return, in addition to creating jobs the old-fashioned (i.e. capitalist) way.

Plus, in addition to being the right thing to do, our plan would have taken the “if we don’t take it, other states will” argument and replaced it with “if they don’t reform, you get the money.” All of a sudden, the governor would have claimed the high ground – and eliminated his political opposition’s main (only) argument.

Was our plan Solomon-esque? Probably not. Populist? A little. Practical? Not in a state governed by a RINOcrat majority, obviously.

But if your endgame is making a point (which let’s face it – is Sanford’s usual endgame), then why not make a point that backs your opponents into a corner and forces them to vote directly against the best interests of the people they represent?

You’d be surprised to see how the votes might fall in such a scenario – assuming S.C. lawmakers actually voted on the record for a change.

In other words, in the protracted public opinion battle Sanford was facing, a “reform or tax cut” position (i.e. either you plug the holes in your gas tank or I stop pumping) would have proven infinitely more advantageous than the “debt repayment” plan Sanford settled on.

Obviously, several of Sanford’s confidants have argued that debt repayment was the most fiscally conservative, most responsible option on the table, but frankly we can’t think of anything more fiscally conservative than finally forcing state government to finally live within its means.

Or anything more responsible than putting this pot of money directly into the economy if lawmakers refused to do so.

THE SECOND SLIP

Having adopted a poor policy position to start with, Sanford’s second critical mistake of the “stimulus” battle was his boneheaded decision to certify any of these funds to begin with.

The governor referred to this judgment call as the “preservation of option,” but clearly all it did was allow the camel’s nose under the tent.

Like many of Sanford’s decisions throughout this process, this one was made in haste after S.C. Rep. Jim Clyburn and others claimed that unless Sanford requested the initial certification by a certain arbitrary deadline, South Carolina would not get any of its “stimulus” loot.

The assumption was ludicrous, but rather than call Clyburn and others on the bluff, Sanford folded and became the last governor in America to certify South Carolina’s share of the massive bureaucratic bailout.

Here underscores one of the other central failures of the Sanford administration throughout the “stimulus” debate – they got bad information. At numerous press conferences, Sanford seemed unsure of exactly what avenues lay ahead of (or behind) him. and more importantly, what the deadlines and consequences of such decisions would be.

We’re not saying he was clueless (he obviously grasped the big decisions he was called upon to make as he made them), but he sure didn’t have a particularly good view of the chessboard.

For example, would the federal government have refused to send South Carolina a dime of the disputed “stimulus” money if Sanford refused to certify it when he did?

Of course not, but assuming it had – wouldn’t than mean Sanford had “won?”

We’ll never know …

Again, we attribute this failure to the fact that the governor’s operation was being run from several hundred miles away by a consultant operating in a purely political vacuum where decisions were made based on future electoral factors that had nothing to do with the decisions at hand.

There is simply no excuse at this level of political discourse to not be 100% informed of your options. That way you can make good decisions and put yourself in the position of issuing – instead of receiving – ultimatums.

Obviously, Sanford felt quite comfortable holding the line on the $700 million that he “controlled,” but he clearly didn’t want to be blamed for costing the state its whole wad.

With wide-eyed lawmakers zeroing in on the weaknesses in Sanford’s original position, his decision to certify the funds now meant that the money was going to be spent one way or another.

In the end, that meant the only option Sanford “preserved” was the right to have his budget vetoes rudely overridden.

THIRDLY

We’ve covered policy and implementation, now let’s look at Sanford’s third major misstep – a Cool Hand Luke-ish “failure to communicate.”

Some have argued that Sanford acquitted himself well in the “stimulus” battle that waged over the state’s TV airwaves, but we maintain the commercial he cut at the height of the public debate was among his worst ever.

Frank Luntz’s famed focus group dials may have liked a lot of what they heard – particularly those dials held by GOP primary voters who still worship the ground Sanford walks on – but this ad’s lengthy script, poor delivery and stuffy set did absolutely nothing for us.

Additionally, with so much material to cover (given the convoluted nature of Sanford’s position), people may have liked a lot of what they heard (while they were listening to it) and then immediately forgotten most, if not all of it.

Had Sanford been pushing a “reform or tax cut” position, obviously, he could have gone with a different script.

Perhaps something like this:

Republicans in Columbia have been spending your money like drunken sailors, growing government by more than 40% over the last four years. Now they’re begging Democrats in Washington to bail them out of the mess.

Either way, you’re being stuck with the bill, and in this economy, that’s not fair.

Growing the economy means investing in you, not more government.

My plan is simple, either these politicians agree to fix their wasteful ways, or I’m sending my portion of the “stimulus” to you.

Nice, huh? And was anybody timing us? Because by our stopwatch that fits in under thirty seconds …

Oh, and for the record, we would have rolled Sanford’s sleeves up (sorry, sensitive topic) and put him outside in the sunshine, not sitting on the set of Miss Marple.

Time, place and manner, people.

In contrast to the ad Sanford ran, we thought the ad that the pro-stimulus forces ran against the governor at the height of the debate was very effective, hammering home simple, easily-digestible themes like those included in our mock ad script above.

Basically, it capably amplified the tried-and-true chorus of these big government backers, “if we don’t take it, other states will.”

Remember … this is South Carolina, people. You gotta talk “slow” and not say a whole helluva lot for people to get what you’re saying. Oh, and you might have to say it more than once, which Sanford’s opponents were clearly obliged to do.

Anyway, with the issue now all but decided, Sanford has been reduced once again to the role of spectator in the affairs of state.

In fact, we’re hearing a dejected Jon Lerner has already begun to shift his focus away from Sanford and onto his latest two S.C. experiments, SCGOP Chairman Karen Floyd and gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.

“I find myself in a lonely position,” Sanford wrote last November, back when he was still fighting up in Washington D.C. against the bailout.

Our guess is the governor finds himself in an even lonelier position now …

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