Mark Sanford Says He Doesn't Want To Be A Human Piñata, But...

About 3 weeks ago, former South Carolina governor and congressman announced he would probably be announcing a primary challenge to Trump. A practiced liar and career-long phony-- kind of a southern, more genteel version of Trump-- Sanford made a concerted attempt to sound authentic and accessible in his campaign video: "You can track me down at 843-737-1888..." I called and spoke with his secretary for 10 minutes. She said she's have him call me back. It's been 3 weeks; still waiting.

This morning he officially announced he's running on Fox News (video below). His campaign theme is "Sanford: Fiscal Conservative."

[The announcement] comes less than 24 hours after the South Carolina Republican Party voted nearly unanimously not to hold a GOP primary election in the state next year in a sign of loyalty to Trump-- a move being replicated by three other states.

But Sanford has indicated he’s aware of the daunting challenges ahead and the extent to which he will be marginalized by members of his own party, including those in his home state.

He said he plans to run on a platform of restoring fiscal discipline to government decision-making, arguing that politicians-- including the current president-- are doing little to protect the country from an economic meltdown under the weight of the rising national debt.

“No one ‘leading’ in Washington is leading, or even speaking of, our financial predicament,” Sanford said in his email message.

“Presidential races focus our attention to politics and have historically been the stage on which we debate where we go next as a country,” he continued. “If we don’t do it this year, we put that national debate off until the next presidential election cycle. I don’t believe we have five more years before inaction guarantees a day of financial reckoning.”


...In declaring his candidacy, Sanford emphasized he would not make the race personal to Trump. It’s a notable strategy given that the president has gone out of his way to publicly criticize and humiliate Sanford-- on Twitter, at campaign rallies in South Carolina and even in front of Sanford’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill.

“Can you believe it? I’m at 94% approval in the Republican Party, and have Three Stooges running against me,” Trump tweeted most recently, referring to former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, two other Republicans pursuing primary challenges. “One is ‘Mr. Appalachian Trail’ who was actually in Argentina for bad reasons.”


...Sanford’s desire to make the race issue-focused could ultimately have the effect of failing to energize and mobilize disenchanted Republicans who desperately want to beat Trump in large part because they find his character and behavior unbecoming of the presidency.

Walsh, for instance, has called Trump “completely unfit” for the office in which he serves-- a rallying cry the “Never Trump” contingent longs to hear from one of their own.

Sanford, in contrast, recently told NBC that while he didn’t believe Trump deserved a second term in office, he would still vote for Trump in 2020 if the president gets re-nominated.

As of Sunday, it was still unclear who, if anyone, Sanford has hired to help run his campaign, beyond volunteers or a couple of communications aides.

Members of the close-knit team he fostered during his previous political endeavors have said they don’t plan to join him on this campaign. In a sign of what support he’ll get from fellow South Carolina Republicans, a crowd of conservatives heckled him in late August when he attended U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan’s annual Faith and Freedom Barbecue in Anderson.

It was the the says after my primary loss last June that a buddy of mine called and said 'God just cleared your calendar for a reason; I know what it is." But, no, the buddy didn't want Sanford to come over to help him re-paint his house. He told him God wanted him to primary Señor Trumpanzee. So he is-- on one issue-- the federal deficit. And Trump immediately dubbed him, along with Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, "the three stooges." The GOP, now the Trump Party, reacted with hostility. On Saturday, the South Carolina Republican Party declared there would be no primary next year and Kansas and Nevada are doing easily manipulated causes instead of primaries. The Arizona GOP has also promised the Trump campaign that they will do something to prevent any expression of negativity towards Trump.

"They're more worried than they let on," said Bill Kristol, a #NeverTrump Republican who is trying to encourage primary challengers.

"If you are confident, if you're Donald Trump, if these are just minor irritants, you know what, you beat them all, you crush them all in the primaries and everyone says, 'Wow, look how strong Donald Trump is,' " Kristol said. "If you're shutting down primaries, you're a little nervous about how the dynamic of these primary challenges could go."

Kristol's hope is that one of these long-shot candidates starts to gain traction-- or that someone else gets into the race with an even better chance-- and that somehow, Trump is denied the nomination.

Kristol readily admits "that's unlikely." So a secondary goal is to bruise Trump enough to hurt his chances come November 2020.

That's what happened, most recently, in 1992, when Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary and earned enough delegates to get a prominent speaking slot at the convention. Bush lost that November to Bill Clinton. Since then, presidents of both parties have successfully avoided a similar fate.