Being out front in knocking Donald Trump as a Republicans carries political risks these days….
While other GOPer’s may not be happy with their party leader?
Getting out front against him in public has cost at least 3 Republicans their jobs now….
While the Mark Stanfort, a former Governor and now a South Carolina US House member , came close actually….
He lost…
The lesson is bound to sink in to those lawmakers of his party….
The embrace of hard right candidates in some House races could actaully help Democratc come November…
South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford on Tuesday became the second incumbent of the year to fall in a Republican primary, losing to a challenger who questioned his loyalty to President Donald Trump.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, state Rep. Katie Arrington was leading Sanford 51 percent to 47 percent when The Associated Press called the race.
Even before the race had been officially called, Sanford had conceded the race, and Arrington had declared victory. For the incumbent, it was his first electoral loss over a career that began with his first election to the House in 1994.
Trump took aim at Sanford on Twitter just hours before the polls closed Tuesday in South Carolina.
“Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina,” the president said, hinting at an earlier episode from the congressman’s time as South Carolina governor. Trump then told voters to support Arrington.
North Carolina Rep. Robert Pittenger was the first incumbent of the year to losewhen he was defeated in his primary last month. Alabama GOP Rep. Martha Robywas forced into a runoff last week, taking less than 40 percent of the vote in her primary.
All three incumbents faced accusation of being insufficiently supportive of the president.
“It’s time for a conservative who will work with President Trump, not against him,” Arrington said in her closing TV spot attacking Sanford. Trump carried the 1st District by 13 points in 2016.
More than most Republicans in Congress, Sanford has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s policy and rhetoric….
image…nymag.com
Trump himself stayed out of the race until just hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, when he sent out a surprise tweet calling for the congressman’s defeat. Arrington’s campaign rushed out a robocall to 50,000 homes highlighting the president’s last-minute endorsement.
Other South Carolina pols say that while Sanford’s opposition to Trump was his undoing, other factors were at play. Some people close to the congressman believe that voters never really got over his affair, which destroyed his national ambitions. Others say there was general exhaustion with a politician who’s been around since the mid-1990s and that voters were ready for someone new like Arrington, a political newcomer serving her first term in the state legislature.
In what was perhaps an early sign his political strength was abating, Sanford received just 55 percent in his 2016 primary, against an opponent who spent little.
Others say Sanford simply failed to run an effective race this year, allowing himself to be out-worked. Sanford’s lethargic reelection bid was a lightly-staffed, shoestring affair. Many of the advisers who guided his gubernatorial and congressional campaigns were not involved…..
More…
I obviously wish Sanford would have won, but he had vulnerabilities beyond his principled opposition to Trump. His victorious runs for Governor were before the matter of his cheating and subsequent divorce and soap opera like aftermath. He was lucky to not have been removed from the office of Governor.
It was a big “upset” when he made the comeback to go back to Congress, so people tend to forget about what a joke he once was considered. Conservative women who would have still voted for him over a Democrat might not have forgotten about the way he treated his former wife though and against a credible female primary opponent, and with him taking the race perhaps for granted until the end, it too much to overcome, along with the Trump factor.
There’s more than one reason why he was vulnerable to begin with though. Arrington will almost certainly win in November and will not join the Freedom Caucus where Sanford is a prominent member and thus will likely have a more “moderate” voting record anyway for the upscale folks there.