The battle for South Carolina
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:21 AM by Mark Murray
Is this Iowa? No, it's South Carolina. You can excuse the confusion because when one of us touched down here late last night, what were we greeted by? SNOW! And it's the real kind too. The big, flaky New England kind that covers cars and in South Carolina creates havoc. (We even heard a plow at the airport, though the ground wasn’t exactly snow-covered -- more like wet.) And we thought heading south would be a nice, dare we say, pleasant, change from Washington. If this is any indication, this Republican race is already shaping up to be, um, unusual.
Politics is front and center on the Columbia State’s front page with just two days until the Republican primary here. The paper has photos of the Big Four -- Huckabee, McCain, Romney and Thompson - under the headline “Dash to the Wire.”
Three GOP polls released yesterday show similar results -- McCain in first, Huckabee narrowly trailing, with Romney and Thompson battling for third.
The New York Times front-pages McCain’s attempts to overcome negative attacks in South Carolina. “This time Mr. McCain is deploying a South Carolina Truth Squad and much of the state’s Republican political establishment, which backed Mr. Bush in 2000. Mr. McCain, who over the last seven years methodically courted important South Carolina Republicans and showered them with money from his political action committee, now has them on board to try to intercept the attacks before there is major damage. In 2000, said Trey Walker, Mr. McCain’s South Carolina political consultant, ‘it was a lot like sitting in the Norad command center looking up at that big board and seeing all these thousands of missiles coming in on you and being able to get off one little puff of smoke back.’”
“Now, Mr. Walker said, ‘If we get an indication there’s an early launch, we have certain detection devices out there, we’ll respond.’”
The Washington Post also looks at the third-party attacks on McCain. “While the McCain camp sent out e-mails immediately decrying [one attack] flier and the phone calls, his opponents questioned whether the senator's true intent was to bat down the attacks or if he is more interested in garnering sympathy and attention.”
The Wall Street Journal writes about McCain’s attempts to court military veterans in South Carolina. The state ”is home to 400,000 veterans, according to the Census Bureau. It has high numbers of military personnel stationed in-state and abroad. Almost 29,000 active-duty soldiers claim the state as their legal residence, making up about 1% of its population -- only nine states have a higher percentage. And there are 66,000 soldiers stationed here, constituting about 2% of its adult population, greater than all but eight states.”
The New York Times says Romney is sticking with the economy message while campaigning here. “Romney arrived in South Carolina on Wednesday morning, continuing to press a retooled message focused on the economy and fixing Washington that worked so well for him in Michigan. But he also sought to restrain expectations for his performance in the primary here Saturday, in which the latest polls, though taken before Michigan, show him running behind both John McCain and Mike Huckabee.”
Have the expectations on the Dem side shifted from -- can Obama win to how much will he win by now that the state’s African-Americans seem to have become believers in Obama’s ability to win?
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), who has vowed to remain neutral, delivers his State of the State address tonight. He “disagrees with the state’s top economist that South Carolina’s economic slowdown will be short-lived -- and he’ll share that assessment in a ‘dual conversation’ with lawmakers and S.C. residents in his annual ‘State of the State’ address at 7 tonight.”
