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Decrying Mark Sanford’s defeat in his congressional primary race, Joe Scarborough today attacked Republican primary voters and predicted that their devotion to President Trump will have a disastrous impact on the 2018 midterms. Scarborough on Morning Joe: “Primary voters in the Republican party have devolved into a Trumpist cult,/B> . . . What Republicans did last night, and what they are doing, in subservience to Donald Trump, is going to lead to a massive Democratic wave this fall.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) appears to have lost his Tuesday primary, which became a referendum on his criticism of President Trump. State Rep. Katie Arrington, who hammered Sanford as a traitor to President Trump, is projected to win the GOP primary in a victory that may spell the end of Sanford’s long political career in the state. The Associated Press called the race at 12:09 a.m., with Arrington leading Sanford by 51-47 percent margin with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Sanford becomes the second incumbent to lose a reelection primary bid this cycle. Sanford had never lost an election until...

A highly publicized extramarital affair didn’t end Mark Sanford’s political career. Nor did the revelation, less than a month before a 2013 special election for Congress, that he had to go to court because his ex-wife had accused him of trespassing. The National Republican Congressional Committee’s decision to cut off funding to him that year was also not a fatal blow. He won his next elections. Then came Donald Trump. Sanford has been one of the president’s most vocal Republican critics in Congress, and Republican primary voters punished him for it. Sanford lost Tuesday night to Katie Arrington, a state...

COLUMBIA, SC 9:23 p.m. With 48 percent of the vote in, it's starting to look like Arrington could win the GOP nomination without a runoff. Arrington has 52 percent of the vote to incumbent Mark Sanford's 45 percent, according to the AP.

Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) is limping into his primary on June 12 against State Rep. Katie Arrington, as Sanford’s repeated public rebukes of President Donald Trump on behalf of the Never Trump movement take center stage in this battle for the ages on the campaign trail in the first in the South presidential primary state. Sanford, who ran to CNN to refuse to endorse President Trump’s re-election in April alongside the staunch Never Trumper, retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and others, is by all accounts struggling heading into the primary just over a couple weeks from now.

“Put a you-know-what sock in it!’ You would think that Republican Congressman Mark Sanford media-dubbed as “hiker of the Appalachian Trail”, would be the last one to blame President Donald Trump for being “partially to blame” for the severe divide in politics currently plaguing the nation. But you would be wrong. “I would argue that the President is at least in partially—again not in any way totally, but partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed,” Mark Sanford, R-SC, said on MSNBC. (ABC, June 15, 2017)

Rep. Mark Sanford said Thursday that President Trump was “partially” to blame for some of the hostility in the country that led to the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others this week. “I would argue the president has unleashed, partially, again not in anyway totally, but partially to blame for the demons that have been unleashed,” Mr. Sanford, South Carolina Republican, said on MSNBC.

Lawmaker agreed with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that President Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric was partially to blame for Wednesday’s shooting of two GOP congressmen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYNZsiRBo1U

Paul Ryan got what he wanted from the House Budget Committee — but also got a warning shot across the bow as well. The American Health Care Act (AHCA) passed on a narrow vote, but not before Republican conservatives offered some resistance to it. The final vote may have been a managed outcome. Kasie Hunt explains that they expected more debate today in the committee and had counted four Republicans on the panel as against the AHCA or leaning toward a no. Four Republican defections would have resulted in a tie, but a plea from the chair may have made...

Republican leadership's plans for the Obamacare repeal were recently leaked, though "repeal" is perhaps too strong a word. "Tweaks" more accurately describes the work of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and other House Republicans. It does not go back to ground zero, where this disaster began. Instead, the plan is to go for "Obamacare Lite." It's simply a different version of Obamacare — a Republican version of Obamacare. It's how President Obama himself might have done it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said, "The best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare, root...

Fresh after Congress and the White House scored the largest transportation spending package in a decade, both presidential candidates this year are proposing billions in funding to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. While both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—and the parties they represent—agree the nation’s roads, bridges, airports, rail system, and ports are in need of repair, the new proposals invite familiar questions over how the spending would be paid for, and whether the federal government is the best provider to pay for it. Those questions, and the lack of a must-pass infrastructure initiative requiring Congress’ attention in 2017, mean that...

In an appearance on CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday, Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), the congressman who represents Charleston, SC, reacted to last night’s mass shooting at the Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church that resulted in nine dead. Sanford said it was uncharacteristic of city of Charleston and the state of South Carolina, calling it an outlier.

There's no official Sen. Ted Cruz presidential team — yet. But the Texas Republican is already surrounding himself with key strategists and advisers that could make his transparent White House ambitions a reality. The tea party firebrand relies on a small circle of advisers to inform his views and amplify his ultraconservative message. The inner circle breaks down into two groups: his chief advisers in the Senate office, and the chiefs of his nationally-focused political operation, which he beefed up in the summer of 2014 by hiring a crop of seasoned Republican campaign operatives. These are the key players that...

COLUMBIA - Former South Carolina First Lady Jenny Sanford joined Democratic Secretary of State candidate Ginny Deerin in an online campaign video where she "opens up" about "Mark." The two spend just over 30 seconds discussing the work ethics of "Mark," before Deerin asks about how he's "so awkward with that online technology." After a scripted pause, Sanford clarifies she's not talking about her ex-husband, U.S. Rep. and Former Gov. Mark Sanford, but of Mark Hammond, the Republican incumbent Secretary of State. Hammond is seeking his fourth term in office. "I think it's time for an update in that office...

Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina surprised the political world on Friday with his announcement that he was ending his engagement to the woman with whom he had an extramarital affair, the revelation of which stunted his rising-star career five years ago. But in interviews last spring, Mr. Sanford and his fiancée, Maria Belen Chapur, indicated that a relationship born in a stew of infidelity, 21st century politics and Twitter-enhanced cable-news sensationalism had, perhaps inevitably, sustained damage.

In a very personal post on his Facebook detailing his latest spat with his former spouse, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford announced that he and his mistress turned fiancee, Maria Belen Chapur, a woman he once called his 'soul mate,' have called off their wedding plans. ''No relationship can stand forever this tension of being forced to pick between the one you love and your own son or daughter, and for this reason Belen and I have decided to call off the engagement,' Sanford wrote. 'Maybe there will be another chapter when waters calm with Jenny, but at this point...

Over the weekend, both the Senate and the House approved $225M in funding for the Iron Dome. The bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a 395 to 8 vote. Opposition to the funding of the Iron Dome demonstarted an unfortunate bi-partisan measure – four Democrats and four Republicans voted against it. The four Democrats were Keith Ellison (MN-05), Zoe Lofgren (CA-19), Jim Moran (VA-08), and Beto O’Rourke (TX-16); The four Republicans were Justin Amash (MI-03), Walter Jones (NC-03), Tom Massie (KY-04), and Mark Sanford (SC-01). Rep. Ellison explains vote on “Meet the Press”: “Because a ceasefire...

You may recall that on Friday, in what would have been a Christmas Miracle were it not several months early, Congress actually got something done. It was the passage of a bill approving $225M in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome defensive missile system. It was quite the bipartisan effort in retrospect, garnering an overwhelming 395 votes in the House with only eight in opposition. One of those eight was Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, and as The Corner reports, he went out on the weekend gab circuit to explain why he didn’t support the measure. “Because a cease-fire is what we...

The most interesting question surrounding the campaigns of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer is not whether they can win. Instead, it is whether their candidacies signal a shift in the values and priorities of voters when it comes to political sex scandals. The main difference between past and current political sex scandals is not the frequency with which they occur, but rather the time it takes to recover from them. In the past, once a politician’s sex scandal was revealed, it often took him (it’s almost always him) many years to regain credibility with the public, if he regained it...