Word: sanfords
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...Sanford, in fact, has always been more effective as a conservative icon than as a conservative governor, a figure popular with the Republican Party's red-meat base but in chronic conflict with South Carolina's GOP-controlled legislature. When TIME ranked him in 2005 as one of the nation's worst state chief executives, it was because his fiscal hard-liner theatrics (carrying piglets under each arm to the door of the state legislature to protest pork-barrel spending) rarely yielded real results. In too many instances, his conservative principles thwarted the economic development of a poor Southern state...
...governor returned from his unexplained absence and revealed his affair. Not even his staff seemed to know exactly where the governor was, and until he was greeted at Atlanta's airport on the morning of June 24 by a reporter from The State, the official line was that Sanford had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail to clear his head after a tough legislative session. Though even his toughest critics seemed to feel some measure of sympathy for Sanford after his confessional, many believed his admission of "selfishness on my part" applied as much to his public transgression...
...latest showcase involved President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package. Sanford led a group of GOP governors, including Alaska's Sarah Palin and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, assailing it as fiscal suicide. Sanford even likened it to the hyper-inflationary policies of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and he spent the past spring fighting to reject a quarter of South Carolina's $2.8 billion share of the funds unless he could use it to reduce the state's debt...
...When he lost that battle with the courts and legislature last week, Sanford, who can be as eccentric as he is thin-skinned, simply disappeared (although staffers insist they could reach him by cell phone in case of emergency). "I've spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina," he said at the capitol in Columbia. "I'm committed to getting my heart right. I've been unfaithful to my wife. I've let down a lot of people. I apologize...
...Sanford said he'll resign the RGA's chairmanship but refused to say whether he'll step down as governor. His friend and former chief of staff, state senator Tom Davis, says Sanford "shouldn't resign, even though I say that with reservations given what's happened the past few days. He deserves the chance to rebuild the trust of the state, and I think today's confession was a good start," Davis told TIME. "I think he's done an extraordinarily good job as governor of alerting people to issues that have been swept under...