Not only is Sanford engaged in pitched battle with the White House over what to do with the “stimulus” money, but, as Veronique mentioned below, he’s also fighting off the DNC which has already launched attack ads against him for not supporting the President’s agenda. Yesterday, Sanford responded to the ad:
My opposition to the stimulus bill was based on the merits as I saw them and has been well-chronicled, but rather than engaging our administration in that debate, Obama’s Democratic National Committee instead chose to launch a political attack ad against us for not supporting the stimulus plan exactly as the Obama administration saw fit. What may fit in one state may not fit in another, and accordingly I think tailoring stimulus responses makes sense.
Equally disturbing is the fact that this ad was launched before the White House even bothered to respond to our request to use just one quarter of the available stimulus money to our state to pay down a portion of our high state debt. This still means a $2.1 billion spending windfall would come to our state — and one has to ask isn’t there a point when enough is enough in spending money we don’t have? I don’t think this approach of targeting ads against anyone who sees an issue a little differently represents the kind of so-called ‘change’ many people were voting for in November.
In his inaugural, President Obama proclaimed ‘an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.’ It’s in that spirit that I’d respectfully ask him to end this ad, as it shatters the idea of change he so well articulated this fall — and to ask his Democratic National Committee to put an end to this mudslinging and get back to an honest debate about the future of our country.