Will conservatives forgive Sanford for being unfaithful to their ideas?

Personal indiscretions may be easier to overlook than the governor's ethical lapses in office.

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Mark Sanford took a bit of a victory lap after his win in the Republican primary for South Carolina’s first Congressional district.

In an interview Wednesday on Morning Joe, Sanford spoke about his fall from grace after the disclosure of his extramarital affair.

He spoke of his long road back into the political arena, and his gratitude for being given a second chance.

But what kind of conservative champion is the former South Carolina governor, who left office in 2011 after one of the more bizarre marital breakdowns in American political history? It may in the end be easier for conservatives to forgive Sanford’s infidelity to his wife than to forget his infidelity to conservative principles of limited public spending.

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When stories broke in 2009 of Sanford’s affair with a woman from Argentina, they also turned up a mountain of evidence showing that his use of state airplanes was anything but conservative. Sanford ultimately had to reimburse the state of South Carolina $74,000 for the investigation into his “disappearance” on the Appalachian Trail and for personal and travel expenses that he had not acknowledged before the scandal hit.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), says the biggest problem facing Sanford in his race against Elizabeth Colbert Busch is his ethical lapses apart from the philandering:

Martin Bashir discussed Sanford’s problematic standing as a conservative with Republican strategist Hogan Gidley and James Peterson of Lehigh University. Watch their discussion here: