Taki Magazine

Speaking on FOX News the same day Sanford dropped his bombshell, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said: “With all due respect to Governor Sanford, I’ve never thought he was a particularly strong candidate. If you looked just beneath the surface in South Carolina, for example, there were a lot of strong conservatives who were very upset with his performance in office… it’s a sign of the lack of popularity that he’s got in the state that the immediate response of a lot of political leaders in the state was he’s got to go, and he’s got to go right now.”

That one of Bush’s most prominent advisers would say that Sanford was unpopular amongst “strong conservatives” in SC is a pretty good indication of what Rove considers “conservative”—big spending, big government GOP hacks who dominate not only this state’s legislature but wrecked the last Republican presidency. Sanford is indeed unpopular amongst such “conservatives” and for good reason—he isn’t one of them.

When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitted his infidelity, many in the GOP establishment at both the state and national level were happy to witness the possible downfall of a prominent conservative who made them look bad by comparison.