{"id":32506,"date":"2013-05-08T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/mark-sanfords-appalachian-spring-2\/32506\/"},"modified":"2013-05-08T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:28:00","slug":"mark-sanfords-appalachian-spring-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/mark-sanfords-appalachian-spring-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Sanford\u2019s Appalachian Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Truthdig\/Reports\/~3\/vVm5G5DpI-4\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/images\/eartothegrounduploads\/AP205890854981_copy.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- Mark Sanford&#8217;s Appalachian Spring --><\/p>\n<h6><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/mark_sanfords_appalachian_spring_20130508\/\">http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/mark_sanfords_appalachian_spring_20130508\/<\/a><\/h6>\n<h4 class=\"date\">Posted on May\u00a08,\u00a02013<\/h4>\n<div class=\"printlinks\">\n<span><\/p>\n<p>By E.J. Dionne, Jr.<\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON\u2013\u201cI want to publicly acknowledge God\u2019s role in all of this,\u201d declared a victorious Mark Sanford as he celebrated an unlikely political rebirth Tuesday night with a sermon praising the Supreme Being and the many \u201cangels\u201d who helped the once-disgraced former governor along the way.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the Almighty did inspire those who drew the boundaries of South Carolina\u2019s 1st Congressional District. They packed it with so many Republicans that Sanford was able to engineer a comeback in the polls by debating a flat piece of cardboard bearing the image of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n<p>Voters in the Lowcountry may have been weary of a man who made a national spectacle of himself by covering up an affair when he was chief executive and then hanging around in office. But when called to arms against liberals and spending and big government, they were prepared to forget Sanford\u2019s hike on the Appalachian Trail, the one that never happened but was his attempt at a false alibi for being in Argentina to see his lover-now-fiancee.<\/p>\n<p>His Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, tried everything she could to shove party and philosophy out of the voters\u2019 minds and keep them focused on the man they had once loathed and laughed at.<\/p>\n<p>She made herself relatively scarce when it came to campaign appearances and her advertising was out of a Chamber of Commerce promotion. \u201cElizabeth knows jobs\u201d was the opener on a spot that touted her as a \u201cCharleston businesswoman\u201d and spoke of the importance of math and science\u2013hard to argue with that. She closed by telling voters: \u201cI\u2019m running for Congress to create jobs in South Carolina. That\u2019s what I know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What she and her handlers did not know, or hoped wasn\u2019t true, was how deep our regional and partisan divisions are. You can run from ideology but you can\u2019t hide. Ironically, it is Colbert Busch\u2019s brother Stephen Colbert who became one of the era\u2019s most entertaining and astute political satirists by understanding the power of ideology. You might say that Sanford\u2019s whole campaign was drawn from a Stephen Colbert sketch.<\/p>\n<p>And, yes, this was South Carolina. Remember that when Newt Gingrich ran for the Republican presidential nomination last year, he  <\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on : <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Truthdig\/Reports\/~3\/vVm5G5DpI-4\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Mark Sanford\u2019s Appalachian Spring\">TruthDig<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/mark_sanfords_appalachian_spring_20130508\/ Posted on May\u00a08,\u00a02013 By E.J. Dionne, Jr. WASHINGTON\u2013\u201cI want to publicly acknowledge God\u2019s role in all of this,\u201d declared a victorious Mark Sanford as he celebrated an unlikely political rebirth Tuesday night with a sermon praising the Supreme Being and the many \u201cangels\u201d who helped the once-disgraced former governor along the way. Perhaps the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}