Mark Sanford served two terms as governor of South Carolina, from 2003 to 2011, and represented the state in Congress before and after. A fiscal conservative who often criticised Donald Trump, he lost his 2018 congressional primary after Trump endorsed his opponent, and briefly challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2019.
The book
Two Roads Diverged: A Second Chance for the Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, the Nation and Ourselves was published on 24 August 2021. As the subtitle suggests, Sanford argues that conservatives face a choice between continuing on the path set during the Trump years and returning to what he sees as the movement's core principles.
His main themes include:
- Fiscal discipline. Sanford has long campaigned against federal debt and spending growth, and criticises both parties for abandoning restraint.
- Character and truthfulness in politics. He argues that leaders' personal conduct and honesty matter to the health of institutions, a theme he discusses with reference to his own past, including the 2009 scandal over his undisclosed trip to Argentina.
- Institutions and limits on power. He makes the case for checks and balances and against personality-driven politics.
In interviews around publication, Sanford said he believed the future of the party did not lie with Trump. Some coverage highlighted his sharp personal criticisms of the former president.
How to read it
The book is an argument from inside the conservative movement, not a neutral history. Readers sympathetic to Trump will reject much of it; some critics on the left saw it as too late or too gentle. Its interest lies in being an early example of a debate that continued within the Republican Party after 2020, and that was in large part settled, for the time being, by Trump's return to the presidency in 2025.