Newt Gingrich has chosen the right place to launch a tougher brand of campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, but serious doubts remain whether he has the time, or if South Carolina voters have the inclination, to take down front-runner Mitt Romney.
Gingrich, following disappointing finishes in the Iowa caucuses and this week’s New Hampshire primary, has rolled into the Palmetto State with sharpened rhetoric bolstered by millions of dollars spent on his behalf by a super PAC that has blistered Romney’s business background.
It’s no coincidence that heightened attacks have been launched in South Carolina, a state that has long earned, and cultivated, a reputation for favoring a vicious brand of politics that belies its other reputation as a bastion of Southern manners. In fact, the state’s motto — “While I Breathe, I Hope” — can be amended during campaign season to “While I Breathe, I Hope for a Few More Chances to Kick My Rivals.”
Republican political consultant Chip Felkel of Greenville, who is unaffiliated in the race, summed it up well the morning after Tuesday’s New Hampshire vote when he sent this message to candidates via Twitter:
“Now, it matters. Bring your big boy pants.”
Gingrich got the message.
“We’re going to go all out to win in South Carolina,” the former U.S. House speaker and Georgia congressman told CNN this week.
“All out” meant launching an ad that slams Romney’s past support for abortion rights when he was governor of Massachusetts. It meant attacking Romney’s record as CEO of Bain Capital, a firm he founded and credits with creating thousands of jobs. Gingrich — and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — have labeled the firm “vulture capitalists” that shutter businesses and lay off workers while lining Romney’s pockets with ill-gotten cash.
That message has been echoed by Winning Our Future, a political action committee run by veteran Gingrich aide Rick Tyler. The super PAC can legally accept unlimited contributions to support a particular candidate but is barred from directly coordinating its actions with the candidate. Winning Our Future has released a brutal 28-minute video that attacks Romney’s time at Bain and features interviews with people who lost jobs after Bain acquired their employers.
Robert Ariail, a political cartoonist for The Herald-Journal in Spartanburg, has chronicled the state’s political shenanigans since its first GOP presidential primary in 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated former Texas Gov. John Connally.
Ariail said the state deserves its reputation for “down and dirty” politics.
That reputation was honed over decades. There was the congressional race in 1978 that used “push polls” to inform voters that the Republican candidate was a Christian and the Democrat was Jewish. Two years later, in the presidential primary, Reagan adviser Lee Atwater — noted for edgy campaigns — leaked a story that Connally had plans “to buy the black vote.”
The most infamous example came in the 2000 GOP primary, when anonymous attacks against John McCain claimed the Arizona senator had an illegitimate, interracial child and that his wife was a drug addict. George W. Bush, who would go on to win the state and the nomination, denied any involvement in the smears, and that connection was never proved.
The viciousness comes with a purpose. Since 1980, no Republican has won the presidential nomination without winning in South Carolina. Also, as the first Southern primary, South Carolina voters get to vet candidates for messages that will appeal to the region’s more conservative base — a base that represents a huge chunk of the party’s national electorate.
But its reputation is also built on a fallacy perpetrated by the national media that the state is a place where an insurgent campaign can succeed. In fact, it’s a place where the establishment candidate always wins. Reagan in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 and McCain in 2008 all won the state, fighting off underfunded challengers who threatened the status quo.
That is playing out again this year, as the establishment candidate, Romney, is the clear front-runner to win Jan. 21.
Brad Warthen, who spent 22 years writing and editing political news at The State newspaper in Columbia, said South Carolina voters are typically “boring” when it comes to presidential contests.
“Even though we are the state that seceded first and would do it again and all that kind of stuff, there is this anti-establishment, anti-government, hyperindividualism thing, but when it comes right down to it, we kind of vote for the ‘boss,’” said Warthen, now a public relations executive who still writes about politics on his personal blog.
The 2012 cycle seemed different, though, until about mid-December, Warthen said. Perry leaped to the top of the polls after joining the race in August. Then it was Georgia’s Herman Cain who enjoyed front-runner status while Gingrich held that role from late November through mid-December.
“Finally, it’s like, ‘Oh, well, we know we’re going to nominate Romney, let’s just get on with it,’” Warthen said.
Few veteran political observers in the state give Gingrich much chance to rebound, no matter how negative he goes against Romney.
“As Newt goes nuclear, it reminds us that the old Newt is back,” Felkel said. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
Voters there, Felkel said, “like what Newt says, they like how he says it, they think he’s smart as a whip, but they always follow that up with ‘but.’ And it’s a big ‘but.’”
Warthen and Ariail agree that Gingrich’s viciousness toward Romney in South Carolina is payback for the withering attacks Romney and his own super PAC launched against Gingrich in Iowa. Those attacks precipitated Gingrich’s exit from the top of the polls as he chose not to respond in kind. He ended up fourth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire.
Gingrich “is so damn angry, he’s after vengeance against Romney,” Ariail said. “He’s a suicide bomber.”
There’s been a dearth of polling in South Carolina the past few weeks, but the most recent surveys give Romney anywhere from a 3- to 18-point margin, with Gingrich and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania battling for second place. A poll released Thursday by Atlanta-based InsiderAdvantage shows the race much tighter, with Romney getting 23 percent to Gingrich’s 21 percent. (Matt Towery, the president of InsiderAdvantage, is a former Gingrich aide.)
Not everyone in South Carolina has given up on Gingrich. State Sen. Jake Knotts, a Republican from West Columbia, said Gingrich is the party’s best hope, calling him the only Reagan Republican on the ticket in a state where “there are a lot of Ronald Reagan Republicans.”
“I don’t know whether he will win,” Knotts said, “but I’m sure as heck hoping he does.”
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