I stumbled across this article today on Real Clear Politics and I was 0verjoyed to see somebody still talking about the prospects, as slim as they are, of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford jumping into the Presidential fray for 2008. The author is spot on about his potential impact.

With the implosion of George Allen, movement conservatives no longer have a candidate in the presidential mix that looks and acts like one of them. Even though the field contains several heavy hitters, such as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, the GOP grassroots has no one that is a natural fit.

If a small but growing number of conservatives have their way, however, a candidate that could truly excite the base might enter the fray: my old boss and current South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

On paper, a Sanford candidacy seems Quixotic. Entering the White House derby at this point would actually be late in the game, he’s little-known outside South Carolina and Washington, D.C., and his main foil the past four years has been the GOP-dominated legislature.

Well, who the hell ever heard of John Kerry before 2004? It’s never too late, especially if Larry, Curly, and Moe are the only three we’ve got at this point.

But if Republican primary voters decide that the 2008 standard-bearer needs to bring the party back to its Reagan roots, Sanford could be the dark horse to watch. The recently re-elected governor could capture conservatives’ imagination with his unrelenting adherence to core principles. Unlike most GOP governors who either pushed their state parties to the left or simply acquiesced to tax or spending increases passed by legislatures of either party, Sanford has battled profligate Republicans at every turn.

When the state House overrode all but one of his 106 spending line-item vetoes in 2004, Gov. Sanford stormed the Capitol the next morning with a piglet under each arm. Red-faced Republicans squealed, but voters loved the bold move. Realizing they couldn’t be quite as wasteful as their counterparts, the Senate sustained seven of the vetoes–but still overrode 99.

I give the piglet incident one of the boldest and gutsiest moves in American political history, and he did this to his own party. That is the kind of guy we need in the White House.

Sanford has been rankling fellow Republicans long before arriving in Columbia. As Congressman from 1995-2001, GOP leadership knew that he was beyond their control. In 1999, he and then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) used parliamentary procedures to save taxpayers a fortune. The farm spending bill came to the floor with an “open rule”–meaning any germane amendments could be offered. Reps. Sanford and Coburn together drafted 121 fat-trimming amendments, and after trudging through just a few dozen of them, House leadership pulled the entire bill. It was only re-introduced after $1 billion had been carved out.

Though it was exciting to work for Sanford, it wasn’t lucrative. His staff was consistently among the lowest-paid on Capitol Hill, and we were expected to pinch every penny in running the office. But a hypocrite Sanford was not; he slept on a cot in his office–all six years. Taxpayers were rewarded for his frugality. Sanford returned well over $1 million of his office budget to the Treasury during his tenure.

I am not going to paste the entire article as I think the point has been made, but you can read the rest of it here.

Mark Sanford would be the second coming of Ronald Reagan and I have no doubt that he would bring back the Reagan Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians that the Republican Party has pissed off for the last five years. I think this guy would destroy whoever the Democrats nominate because he is the honest real deal and Americans respect that.

I strongly urge any readers who want to save our party to write Governor Sanford and plead with him to run. I am moving to South Carolina this spring and as soon as I get down there I will not waste any time getting involved to try and make this man the next President of the United States.