Scarborough gushes: I would have supported Mark Sanford in 2012 'without a second guess'

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough lavished praise upon former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) after watching an ad for Sanford's bid for a congressional seat.

"I would have supported him in 2012 without a second guess," Scarborough said of Sanford, who was a rising Republican player before being forced out of office in 2009 following revelations that he had engaged in an affair with an Argentinian woman whom he visited under the pretense of "hiking the Appalachian trail."

Sanford announced his intention to run for Congress last month, and recently released a new ad that both addresses his past infidelities while promoting his credentials as a fiscal conservative.

"I've cut spending, reduced debt and made Washington more accountable," Sanford said in the ad. "More recently, I've experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes. But in their wake we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances, and be the better for it."

Scarborough said that, while serving in the House of Representatives alongside Sanford, "There was nobody more courageous than Mark," before telling his panelists an anecdote about the two former GOP House members being threatened by allies of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich over pushing for too many spending cuts.

"I'm sitting there next to Mark saying, 'This isn't good. This is not good. I've burned one bridge too many,'" Scarborough recalled. "And Mark looks up at them and he starts laughing. He turns to me and he goes, 'Are they threatening us?' And he got up, and he walked out. And they just froze, scared to death. That was just Mark."

Watch Scarborough's endorsement of Sanford, as aired Monday on MSNBC, below.

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