Sanford in 2012?

Could my good Governor, Mark Sanford, wind up as the Republican nominee for President in 2012? And, if so, might he actually win? Well, The American Conservative seems to think that, if the great behemoth of Hope n' Change turns out not to be the very Will of God it has thus far promised, Governor Sanford, thanks to his "stringent free-market philosophy" and "elegiac demeanor," might be well positioned to do both of those things:

Mark Sanford is easy to overlook. If Republicans need a champion in the Obama era, there are more colorful candidates than the South Carolina governor. He doesn’t play electric bass, or to the Religious Right, like Mike Huckabee. He has made no attempt to rewrite the GOP’s almost forgotten small-government playbook like Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty or Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal. Though he is popular, Sanford seems incapable of playing a red-meat populist like Sarah Palin. He looks plain, his philosophy is old, and he has an elegiac demeanor that seems incompatible with electoral politics.

But unlike many other Republican politicians of his stature, Sanford recognizes that there are limits to ambition, that government treasuries are not bottomless, and that no ideology can captain the globe. If the promise of “hope” in the form of bailouts fails to revive the American economy, Mark Sanford will be the GOP’s most dangerous man in 2012.

In recent weeks, he has become the unofficial spokesman against Obama’s trillion-dollar economic stimulus plan.....While cable’s talking heads shout at him, he somberly quotes Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek. He worries aloud that the bailouts represent a 'crisis of American civilization.' "

Here's the link to the full article, which is interesting both as a profile and 2012 look-ahead.

Insofar as the question of a run itself is concerned, it's been asked before and Sanford has repeatedly denied that he's got any future political plans after his term as Governor is up. Nevertheless, the race might actually set up rather well for him; since his term as Governor will end in January 2011, giving him a full year before the Iowa Caucuses to get a campaign up and running. Plus, he'd be an easy favorite in the all important SC-GOP Primary.

Will he? Who knows - and honestly, at this point, it's way too early for me to care all that much about the 2012 Elections. Besides, Sanford already has an important day job; and it's not going to be getting any easier over the next 2 years.