The sloppy, sordid mess that is the Sanford affair is more than just the implosion of another G.O.P. contender for the throne in 2012. It goes to the core of the Republicans' current problem. They have no plausible public identity. Or rather, their public identity has been exposed as fraudulent. Indeed, Sanford is the penultimate expression of the intellectual and emotional bankruptcy of the Grand Old Party and the conservative cause that it purports to uphold and defend.
From an ideological and policy point of view, Dubya's eight year reign utterly eviscerated the party's claim to the mantle of small, limited government. Pretty much from start to finish, Dubya expanded the role of the federal government to elephantine proportions, launching all manner of utopian enterprises that proved as costly as they were unworkable. From No Child Left Behind to The Patriot Act to Iraq and the mirage of democratizing the Middle East by bayonet, Dubya took the federal government (and the party that followed him fanatically) into bold new frontiers of unnecessary and unsustainable activity. 43 capped off this legacy of utopian slop with bailouts of banks and auto companies that were (by his own admission) totally at odds with Free Markets 101. Then he sauntered out of office, leaving the party's future and the nation's finances a shambles.
There is a symbolic connection between Sanford's meltdown and the rapidly eroding fortunes of his party and ideology. As governor, Sanford railed against accepting Obamanon's stimulus funds to the states, then collapsed and caved in. Sanford wanted to be a poster boy for small, limited government and traditional family values, but like Dubya, the rhetoric was woefully at odds with his operational reality.
The G.O.P. can't pretend that Sanford is an isolated issue, that his individual woes don't reflect deeper, more pervasive problems for the party and its philosophy.
The question for the G.O.P. and conservatism in the days and months ahead is what does it truly stand for? What can it honestly advertise itself as BEING without being exposed as a hypocritical fraud shortly thereafter?
Obama is clearly bent on doubling down on Dubya's Big-Government binge. Do the Republicans want to offer a clear and honest alternative? Do they want to be the party of economic liberty? Do they want to be the party of sober, balanced, adults?
