COLUMBIA, S.C. — For eight straight Republican presidential primaries, the rule in this state has been simple: Win or go home.
South Carolina has always been the GOP establishment’s fire wall in presidential politics, where insurgents go to die, where the Empire strikes back, where the plucky candidate who enjoyed a brief breakout moment in the snows of New Hampshire or Iowa becomes a mere footnote in someone else’s march to the nomination.
All that, however, was before the anti-establishment forces shredded the Republican Party’s old playbook — and perhaps nowhere as noticeably as in this state, which hosts the first presidential debate in May and the “first in the South” primary in February.
Exhibit A?
Nikki Haley, an Indian American who last year became the state’s first woman or ethnic minority to be elected governor.
Haley beat better-known and better-financed opponents in a heated Republican primary even as she denied charges that she had had an affair with a conservative blogger.
That race proved that politics in South Carolina is still a muddy business. But it also seemed to prove that the established rules of engagement — hiring powerful consultants, scooping up big endorsements, raising gobs of cash, blanketing the airwaves with ads and mounting whispering campaigns — don’t have the same power that they once did.
“Any candidate that comes into South Carolina with any preconceived idea of how to win here will be in for a rude awakening,” Haley said in a recent interview.
Although the fervor that powered Haley to the governor’s mansion remains, what has gone missing is a potential presidential candidate who appears able to harness it.
Sightings of potential front-runners, such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, have been scarce, while most of the newcomers are only just starting to tiptoe into the state.
“These candidates, it is their job to get people excited, it is their job to get people to care,” Haley said. “We have not seen that yet in South Carolina.”
Activists and party leaders have been no more impressed.
“I’ve got problems with Romney because of Obamacare,” said activist Pat Ryan, 65, a retired nurse who lives in Charleston. “Palin is good as a thorn in the side but not presidential material. Gingrich is philosophical, learned, but I don’t know if he can carry through. Huckabee has grown on me, but he is too conciliatory. But I can’t believe that the choices out there are the only ones. There have to be some more people out there. It’s going to take time to see who comes out of the woodwork.”
The field
The one potential candidate who seems to have come out of the woodwork with some momentum is Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.
Fresh off the House floor and a debate over spending cuts, Bachmann was greeted at a recent event with raucous applause and several standing ovations during her 40-minute speech. Upstate Republicans, who tend be of the conservative Bob Jones University variety, were still buzzing about her at an event featuring fellow potential candidate Rick Santorum days later.
Campaign 2012 tools
The Post Most: PoliticsMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Featured Blogs & Columns
Loading...
Comments