...only he doesn't seem like a real conservative in common usage of the term. (He seems more like the L word ;))

The governor from South Carolina has credentials...at least on a cursory level...to get me to finally vote GOP for President for the first time in my life.

Reason's Matt Welch has the story about new expose' on Sanford at the American Conservative magazine.

Highlights that caught my eye:

He calls the public-education system "a Soviet-style monopoly." He promoted school choice through tax rebates to avoid the appearance of government control

...opposed REAL ID on civil liberties grounds.

But the governor edges closer to pure libertarianism at times. He rolls his eyes at the Columbia sheriff's department's zeal in investigating Michael Phelps's recreational pot use. And he criticizes Alan Greenspan's management of the "opaque" Federal Reserve. "If you take human nature out of a Fed, it might work," he explains. "But you can't. You can have these wise men. But who wants to turn off the spigot at a party that's rolling?"

He also deviates from the Republican line on foreign policy....When asked about the invasion of Iraq, he extends his critique beyond the constitutional niceties. "I don't believe in preemptive war," he says flatly. "For us to hold the moral high ground in the world, our default position must be defensive."

Well, I'll be...

How refreshing.

I don't give a damn what party someone belongs to. If they have the guts and conviction to say all that.

More from the American Conservative :

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.

...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.

Sanford has threatened to decline large portions of the bailout, preferring not to bridle South Carolinians with the accompanying obligations. 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.”

But Sanford’s stringent free-market philosophy was born in experience before it was matured by theory.

Very nice. I like the guy.

What do our conservatives and registered Republicans think?

Sure, there's something to surly dislike for some of you...matters of religion or war perhaps. Maybe even his fiscal stinginess or underwhelmed view of spending. But overall, what say you?