Scarborough: Sanford could return to being a very strong voice in D.C.

>>> first leg of mark sanford 's shot at political redemption is complete. he easily clenched a spot in the runoff for the charleston area congressional seat. what is still unclear who his opponent will be. following thin voter turnout , bostic and grooms separated less than 1%. now sanford will try to cobble together support for those who voted for other candidates in what was a packed field flanked by his sons, sanford invoked the importance of putting the country's financial house in order.

>> at the end of the day , what we are all fighting for as fellow south carolinians and doing something on the tipping point that our civilization now finds itself. wherein, we have 40 cents of every dollar barred to sustain government. where we have a fed that buys 75% of what the treasury spends every year. where we have a congressional budget office that says in just 12 years, we will only have enough to pay for interest and entitlement and nothing else.

>> the winner will meet democrat elizabeth colbert busch the sister of stephen colbert in may.

>> she is a different side of the family. like missouri and missouri. half of them pronounce it one way and half of them pronounce it the other way.

>> an interesting race for sure.

>> you listened to mark sanford talk and the way the guy has always talked. just like that. i remember after his crisis happened, we were down in south carolina and i invited him to lunch and we sat and talked. he said, he was talking about how stupid he was and how sorry he was and we talked about the personal side of everything. and then i asked him about politics. i said do you think you'll ever get in sf he is like, i don't know. this was a couple of years ago. he goes, all i know, i'm such an idiot. he said this is our time, talking about me and him. these are the things we have talked about for 20 years, joe, nonstop. he said i can't believe -- i shot myself in the foot this way and was this stupid. well, he is back and he is talking about these issues that everybody else is talking about right now.

>> it's a beautiful thing.

>> and if he continues and wins this, he is going to actually be a very strong voice in washington.

>> i think he will be a strong voice. the interesting thing, as you know, about american politics is that the voters are very forgiving. at the end of the day , people of south carolina and his district are going to look at him and measure him against his past for sure, but also in the context of this time and the issues that are going to be important to discuss. and he has taken the appropriate amount of time away from it all to heal himself, to heal his family and to move on, and i think the voters appreciate that. they were clear about the numbers he got in that field. it was a kroued field and he could have easily gotten swamped had the voters felt differently. i think the issues the way he speaks about them that crystallizes the momted moment for him.

>> he has a runoff to get through but i think in the runoff they will probably have an ugly recount and all the much better for mark sanford . san senor,