Whip Count: Sanford Impeachment Would Pass SC House?

A South Carolina Democratic state representative tells the Associated Press that an effort to impeach Gov. Mark Sanford would get the 83 votes needed to make it through the South Carolina House, a day after 60 of 73 House Republicans, including House Speaker Bobby Harrell (R), signed onto a GOP caucus letter calling on Sanford to step down. The legislature is out of session until January, and, since it still looks unlikely that Sanford will resign--he recently told The Daily Beast's Will Cathcart that he wants to get back into the policymaking game--an impeachment effort could mount...if the House were to pass an impeachment resolution, Sanford would be tried by the Senate, where a majority of Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler (R), have also called on him to resign.


Calls for resignation may not equal impeachment votes: among other things, the House Republicans' letter cited the "stress, uncertainty, and negative scrutiny" that Sanford had brought upon the state, and, if you look at it one way, impeachment might bring more of all three. But if those calling for his resignation would, in fact, support impeachment, the numbers are against Sanford right now.