Despite announcing he’s suspending his campaign for president only hours earlier, Republican presidential candidate Mark Sanford still appeared for a scheduled speech at Franklin Pierce University’s Pizza and Politics event on Tuesday.
There was only a small attendance at the event, with about 20 students and faculty in the university’s library to hear Sanford speak.
Taking advantage of the intimate audience, Sanford grabbed a chair and sat on it backward to address students directly while going over his talking points.
Sanford, a former South Carolina governor and former U.S. Representative who only launched his campaign two months ago, said he was “not delusional” that he would be the Republican nominee over incumbent President Donald Trump. Since February of 2019, Trump has been behind Trump as their selected candidate, to the point that some states have canceled their Republican primaries and caucuses, despite former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh still in the race for the Republican nomination.
While he knew he wasn’t a serious contender for the office, he hoped to encourage a national dialogue about his top issue – the national debt deficit.
It’s the issue no one is talking about, he said.
People are generally ready to go with the flow, Sanford said, and unwilling to change something that seems like it’s working and not a problem. He asked one student why she used a particular brand of toothpaste. When she replied that it was just what her mother had always bought, he nodded. “Me too,” he said. And whether it’s the best brand, as long as it’s working, most people will just continue to go with the flow.
Other than a few “voices in the wilderness” talking about the national debt issue, it’s not in the forefront of people’s minds. With no one talking about it, it seems to most people as though it must be fine, he said.
But it is something to worry over, Sanford said, calling the national debt a “predictable financial crisis” that would eventually have consequences.
Sanford said the beginning of impeachment hearings against Trump Wednesday signaled a death knell for his campaign, as he said the proceeding will “overwhelm” the political conversation. Since his entire motivation was to begin a conversation about the debt issue, he said there wasn’t going to be room to have that talk on the national stage, as it would be overshadowed by the impeachment.
How he’ll continue to get that message out, he said, it is up in the air right now. But the conversation should continue.
“I’m about five hours … maybe four and a half hours into this,” Sanford said of his suspended campaign, checking his watch. “But I care to the core of my being about this stuff.”
One of the criticisms Sanford has levied against Trump is his broken campaign promise to get the national debt under control. The debt is still rising by $100 million a day, Sanford said, and it’s not sustainable.
When asked how much debt is “too much,” Sanford said there’s “no magic number” but at the current rate, to pay back the deficit, future generations would have to bear an untenable tax burden. Sanford said he still favored a plan he backed as a congressman, which would reduce government spending by 1 percent for five years, and use the savings to pay off the national debt.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.