SAYS POLITICAL OPERATIVE, LOBBYIST IS ‘PROBLEM’ FOR CONSERVATIVES

I’m not sure what exactly caused this little tiff to come up now, but Gov. Mark Sanford took a pretty good pot shot at a once-powerful and much-maligned South Carolina political consultant and lobbyist in a recent interview with Human Events‘ John Gizzi, calling him a “RINO” and a “problem” for conservative Republicans.

“Because the bottom line in South Carolina is we absolutely have Republican control, but we do not have a conservative working majority in our body politic,” [Sanford said ...] “I guess some folks call folks like that ‘rinos’ [Republicans In Name Only], I don’t know what you call them, but the bottom line is a lot of folks with whom we’ve indeed had troubles have not been pushing conservative ideology.”

He specifically singled out Warren Tompkins, top political operative for the late Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell. Tompkins, according to Sanford, “long ago earned his stripes as a Republican. But Warren Tompkins these days makes his money as a lobbyist with issues before the state general assembly. We won’t play ball, in other words, whether you’re a lobbyist from the right or a lobbyist from the left. We try and play with the state down the middle, which is not our tribe against your tribe; it’s the bigger tribe of, ‘do you believe in limited government?’”

Maybe it’s because Tompkins is severely weakened after leading a monumentally over-funded presidential candidate straight to his Waterloo — a failure that has seen a number of his clients jump ship — but it’s rare for Sanford to go after an opponent in such a direct manner. Usually he reserves his attacks for press releases from his spokesman or campaigns from his taxpayer-funded “reform groups.”

So is this the beginning of a larger war between these two? And, if so, will it hasten the downfall of a former kingmaker, or give him an opportunity to crawl out of the ashes by engaging an all-too-beatable opponent in Sanford?

This could be good.