Rather than engage his real opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sleaze-bag Mark Sanford chose to take free advantage of the disgraceful and grossly unchallenged sexism the political right used in the 2010 media blitz which wound up sweeping Republicans into control of the House of Representatives. You may recall negative ad after negative ad against incumbents containing the wholly unnecessary phrase that he or she "voted with Nancy Pelosi" for or against whatever legislation the right wanted to see go the other way. They might as well have added "and you know you hate Nancy Pelosi". There is good case to be made that this use of Nancy Pelosi--the first woman to be Speaker of the House and closest ever in the line of succession to the Presidency--as a political tackling dummy or human punching bag was a deliberate appeal to sexists everywhere, and to my mind, that case has yet to be made in any manner proportionate to the crime. Well, Mark Sanford's decision to use a cardboard cutout of Nancy Pelosi in a mock debate on a street corner and his frequent allusions to the former Speaker instead of his actual opponent make that case pretty clearly.
Was the second "Republican Revolution" of the 2010 mid-term a referendum on President Obama? How much of it might have been belligerent bulls being taunted to skewer the cape because it was rarely waived without the image of the Madame Speaker on it? I don't recall a time when every incumbent who voted his or her mind was said to have "voted with" the leader of their party as if it were an act of conspiratorial treachery the way it was done in 2010 with Ms. Pelosi. How easy a slide it was for Mark Sanford to avoid the toil and homework of making good cases why the voters should favor him over his actual opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch when so much had already been done not so long ago to overtly or subliminally sow hatred for the former Speaker (and still current leader of the Democrats in the House). For the price of a lousy cardboard cutout Sanford took advantage of tens of millions of dollars worth of negative ads demonizing Nancy Pelosi for nothing more than being Nancy and not Tom, Dick or Harry, with a last name that ends in a vowel. If the "war on women" had a Fort Sumter event it was the 2010 media blitz using the Madame Speaker as cannon fodder. And how fitting for the most recent battle in that war on women to come home to the state of Fort Sumter.
No, not all South Carolinians are sexist and they do have a woman governor. But with redistricting there are bastions where it may as well be 1861 and women are cardboard cut-out appearances for men to hold up while they do whatever the hell they want. Sad day in a sad era.