Among the questions asked 770 registered voters across the state on Dec. 15 was one that focused on what should be done about Gov. Mark Sanford: Should he resign, or be impeached or be censured?   Or perchance, should the legislature move beyond Sanford? 

The majority has spoken: Get over it.

“As counter-intuitive as it might seem, there is little to suggest there is any strong political will among South Carolina voters to remove the governor from office, or even to take punitive measures against him,” said Matt Towery, chairman and CEO of InsiderAdvantage, which conducted the poll with Statehouse Report. “Much of the public just doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.”

According to the poll, 23 percent of respondents called for Sanford‘s resignation and 11 percent wanted the legislature merely to censure him. Yet only 1 in 7 people, or 14 percent of those polled, wanted Sanford impeached.   

Those results, which had a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percent, dovetailed with a special House Judiciary subcommittee, which voted 6-1 not to impeach him earlier this month.

But 51 percent of respondents agreed the legislature should “stop wasting its time” over Sanford’s alleged ethical lapses and get down to the real work of benefiting the state’s citizens.

Consider, too, that Democrats, the state’s opposition party, were split nearly down the middle on the Sanford issue.

Just 36 percent of Democrats polled favored impeachment, even after Sanford became national comedy fodder for his hike on the Appalachian Trail that ended up being a visit to Argentina to see his paramour.

But nearly the same percentage, 33 percent of Democrats, agreed with nearly 60 percent of Republicans and independents, that the legislature should move on.

Cabot, who doubles as the school’s dean of students, said she was surprised by the number of women polled not calling for Sanford’s head, with nearly 56 percent saying the matter should be dropped.

Slightly more men than women (26 and 21 percent, respectively) wanted Sanford to resign.

“For the last six months, lawmakers have been caught up in what to do about Gov. Mark Sanford’s shenanigans,” said Statehouse Report publisher Andy Brack, about the publication‘s first-ever poll. “After six months of headlines, it’s pretty clear people are sick of it and want the legislature to start working on things like better jobs, better education, and policies that make a difference in their lives.”

Erskine College political science professor Ashley Woodiwiss said the entire poll was revealing because  the “political payoff of this poll bodes well for the Republican Party as we head towards the 2010 elections.

“The Democrats, who always have a hard row to hoe in state elections, don't appear to be getting much electoral payoff from either the troubles within the GOP or from the present tough situation confronting our state.”

InsiderAdvantage (www.InsiderAdvantage.com) is a polling and research analysis firm located in Atlanta, and whose polls have appeared in a host of media outlets.

Next week:  The gubernatorial horse race and whether the state is moving in the right direction.

Because of the holiday season, there are no major legislative meetings set for the coming week.

As unemployment rates continue to rise, and as the state’s services and agencies are cut, look for a very angry electorate in voting booths next November.

The full Judiciary Committee in the state House of Representatives met this week to take up the matter of the proposed impeachment of Gov. Mark Sanford. Earlier, a special subcommittee voted 6-1 to recommend that he not be impeached. Then they voted to recommend that he be censured. 

The full committee followed suit, voting 18-6 this week not to impeach, but voting unanimously to offer an official rebuke of the governor for leaving the state for five days to meet with his Argentine lover. Sanford still faces more ethical and personal hurdles, including a filed divorce from his wife. Legislators can still file stand-alone bills on the floor of the House or Senate, as well as attaching impeachment/removal amendments to popular bills.

DEC. 18, 2009 -- Two things surprised me about a new poll on what South Carolinians think should be done about our philandering governor, Mark Sanford.

First, only 1 percent of the 770 registered voters who responded to our InsiderAdvantage/Statehouse Report poll had no opinion of what should be done about the governor’s behavior, which has turned South Carolina into a running joke everywhere from water coolers to late night television. For only 1 percent of people to have no opinion about options for his fate shows just how deeply his personal failures have cut into the state’s psyche.

Second, a majority of those polled -- 51 percent of respondents -- said the General Assembly should move beyond Sanford and get down to real work of helping people throughout the state. So instead of impeaching him or censuring him or saying he should resign, most South Carolinians pointed the finger away from Sanford and toward the legislature. 

The clear message of the poll was that most people – and more Republicans and Independents than Democrats – think it’s just time to move on. If legislators have a half a brain, they’ll forget about the governor’s case, put the whole mess behind them, and start trying to figure out ways to cut the state’s 12 percent unemployment rate and improve its perennially poor education system.

With House Judiciary Committee this week voting unanimously to recommend censure to the General Assembly, maybe the state’s very public encounter with Sanford as a modern, gothic Faulknerian protagonist is about to be over. Despite the year he still has in office, it will be a lackluster time during which the governor will cough the libertarian rhetoric he used to spout with passion.   Instead of having a bully pulpit, he’ll struggle to find pit stops of political relevance. 

Yes, the Sanford saga soon should be over – but only, of course, if bottom-feeders in the media can get over it.  It’s been hard to pick up a local newspaper or turn on the television over the last few months without seeing the latest speck of new (mostly meaningless) information about the Sanford family. Either it was the governor at an endless series of Rotary club meetings apologizing for his behavior (a club in Charleston agreed to invite him – at his request – only if he didn’t apologize and instead talked about issues; of course, he couldn’t resist apologizing again for his moral failings.) Or it was Mrs. Governor, First Lady Jenny Sanford, enflaming the media even more by appearing in a national magazine story or giving a big TV interview or issuing a press release about how she was trying to protect her family. Whenever something happened, the too-sensational media was there in full froth to pick up the inanity of whatever was the next Sanford thing.

So with the Year of Sanford winding down, let’s wish for a few things for the new year:

Let’s hope our state can move on, not only for the people’s sake but for the Sanford family’s sake. Let’s start to leave the governor alone on this personal issue. The governor has suffered, as have his wife, sons and family. Send a message to the media to not go nuts when the state Ethics Commission has a hearing soon about allegations of 37 violations by the governor. Turn off the television if reporters are invasive in February in the Sanford’s very public divorce.

Let’s also hope the General Assembly can resist the urge to obsess about the governor in the 2010 session. There’s enough stuff that needs to be addressed seriously that wasting more time on the Sanford mess just plain ain’t smart.

It’s time to move on.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- I thought I was through for the year [See Dec. 15 commentary on "Nothing gets done"], but the President’s idea of a commission to study the budget problem is what’s wrong with Washington.

I saw this nonsense develop.  When I came to the Senate in 1966, we had year-to-year budgets. But the Appropriations Committee was broken down into thirteen functions and the one function didn’t know what the other twelve were doing. When we summed up at the end of the year, we had a budget that exceeded everyone’s spending limits. So we instituted the Budget Committee to get an allocation for each particular function at the beginning of the year, and important programs were not ruined by cuts across the board in the old procedure.  As we instituted the budget process, the economists taught us that a three-year budget was more realistic.   But three years became five years, and five years became ten years, and ten years now is about to become a study commission.

When Dick Lugar was Mayor of Indianapolis, he had to submit a budget each year that would pay the bill. If he had submitted a five or ten year budget, Wall Street would have downgraded his credit rating. The same with Mark Warner as Governor of Virginia. Every mayor, every governor, in America next year will submit budgets that will be paid for in a year. And the President and Congress ought to approach the problem like a mayor or a governor. Even a three year budget that would pay the bill would be salutary. But this nonsense of campaigning by appointing a commission instead of governing has got to stop. We elected President Obama not to referee, but to play. Not to campaign, but to govern. Tell him as President to submit his budget that will pay the bill.

Economy. A week after another draconian state budget cut, and it turns out tax revenue collections are on track, and cuts may not be needed!  For now. More.

Rutherford. State Rep. Todd Rutherford’s rant about the House Judiciary Committee dropping the “impeach Sanford” ball has an added benefit of him calling state leaders “idiots”. Is he right? More.

Housing. Real estate sales up 62 percent across state compared to last November.  More.

Bernanke. Fed chair Ben Bernanke, a Dillon homeboy, was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine.   Congrats. More.

Unemployment. While the state’s unemployment rate “spiked” at record-high 12.3 percent in November, unemployment benefits can be extended to up to 99 weeks.  More.

Trifecta. South Carolina was a major contributor to Yale’s annual quotes of the year list. In short, we LIE about the APPALACHIAN TRAIL while we KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OUR MEDICARE.  More.