Category: South Carolina

SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY RESULTS: Newt Gingrich Stops Mitt Romney’s ‘Inevitability’; Rick Santorum Places Third

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CHARLESTON, S.C.
The polls just closed and we are at Mark Clark Hall on the campus of the Citadel, where Rick Santorum will have his Primary Night celebration. Santorum today said he would be pleased with a third-place finish and would definitely stay in the race through the Jan. 31 Florida primary.

Fox News declared Newt Gingrich the winner here the minute the polls at 7 p.m. and apparently, the questions now are (a) what Gingrich’s margin of victory will be, and (c) whether Santorum will beat Ron Paul for third place.

UPDATE: CBS News on the South Carolina exit polls:

Sixty-four percent said the debates were an important factor for them; just 34 percent said they were not. Gingrich won standing ovations in both debates while Romney often struggled — and at one point received a smattering of boos for equivocating over how many years of his tax returns he would release.
A majority of voters — 53 percent — said they made up their mind about who to back within the last few days.

UPDATE II: Just talked to Santorum campaign communications director Hogan Gidley, who referred to this week’s late-breaking news that Santorum won the Iowa caucuses. Romney “was going to 3-and-0 three days ago.” The subtraction of Iowa from Romney’s win column and his weak performance in two debates this week has “blown a hole in his inevitability,” Gidley said. Now each candidate has one win — Santorum in Iowa, Romney in New Hampshire and, apparently, Gingrich in South Carolina — Gidley said: “We’re starting over fresh in Florida.”

Santorum is already advertising in Florida and will unveil a new ad there Sunday.

UPDATE III: The world’s most famous homeschooling dad:

UPDATE IV: Ron Paul was ridiculously long-winded in his speech, forcing the crowd here to wait interminably for Rick Santorum’s turn. During his speech, he was cheerful and smiling, and concluded by saying, “Join the fight!”

One “Occupy” heckler was started shouting during the speech, and then another half-dozen of the “Occupiers” erupted after the speech ended. They were escorted out by security, and then police arrived to escort them off campus. The results, with 67 percent of precincts reporting:

Gingrich ……….. 41%
Romney ………… 26%
Santorum ………. 18%
Paul ……………… 13%

Notice that Gingrich’s margin over Romney (15 points) is greater than Romney’s margin over Santorum (8 points). Romney’s campaign made a strategic miscalculation. There were 11 days between the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary and today’s primary in South Carolina. And until Monday, Romney’s mix of TV ads here still included attacks on Santorum. Once they realized  that Gingrich was gaining ground, they switch to nonstop attacks on Newt, but the weight of Romney’s ad attacks was less than the impact of Newt’s strong debates.

But Mitt’s “inevitable” mojo spell is now decisively broken, and the questions now are multiple: Can Mitt get his mojo back? Will Newt be able to avoid further “drama”? Can Santorum get the financial resources to stay in the race, hoping to be the last man standing if Newt auto-destructs? Also, given Newt’s decisive margin, was it really necessary for Perry to drop out before the primary in order to stop Mitt?

Discuss among yourselves. I’ve got a deadline tonight for the American Spectator, so that’s all the blogging I’ll be doing for a while.

South Carolina Primary Day: Before My Saturday Afternoon Nap in Charleston

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The National Affairs Desk, 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20, 2012.
Squinting at my computer screen while blogging about Will Folks.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
Last night I lost my temper and blew up at Ben Howe, who was defending Erick Erickson’s pro-Perry bias as if it were an inconsequential thing to be shrugged off, despite its disastrous impact on the Republican primary campaign. There was a bit of back-and-forth and obviously, I recognized that Ben was arguing as a special pleader, obligated by the duties of loyalty to defend his Red State boss. But I was also personally invested, having predicted the failure of the “Phantom Menace” — and the likely consequences of that failure — before the fateful launch of the Perry bandwagon.

“What I fear will happen is that Perry will spend several months sucking up media oxygen and burning through GOP donor cash, only to collapse early next year. This will have the effect of suffocating other conservative candidates, and thereby lead to … Romney 2012.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 9, 2011

My argument Friday night with Howe was one of those situations where wisdom would have advised, “Drop it. It’s not worth arguing about. Agree to disagree.” But sleep deprivation and too much coffee had made me irritable, and Howe seemed to me to be disingenuously dismissive of Red State’s complicity in the Perry debacle.

On the one hand, you see, Red State constantly boasts of its enormous influence among the conservative grassroots. But on the other hand, having spent many months trying to convince the grassroots that the Smilin’ Texan was The Only Man Who Can Beat Romney, now Howe was trying to pretend that this catastrophic misuse of Red State’s influence was something trivial, and that Erickson should not be held accountable for it. Tired of Howe’s refusal to acknowledge the importance of Erickson’s role, and the enormous responsibility thus borne by Perry’s leading New Media advocates, I finally blew my top when Ben mockingly asked why Erickson should ‘fess up to his error.

“BECAUSE HE WAS F–KING WRONG, AND I WAS F–KING RIGHT, AND HE WON’T F–KING ADMIT IT, THAT’S WHY!”

And then I walked out to have a cigarette and regain my composure. My sudden outburst of rage was embarrassing, despite my own certainty about the essential point: Being right should count for something in the realm of political punditry.

Perry’s botched candidacy had enormous consequences: It discouraged other candidates (including Sarah Palin) from entering the race, it encouraged Tim Pawlenty to quit the race, it robbed Michele Bachmann of the boost she otherwise would have gained for winning the Ames Straw Poll and it prevented anyone from noticing the surprisingly strong fourth-place finish at Ames by Santorum’s low-budget campaign.

Well, I could write a book about all that, but I felt like an idiot for blowing up at Ben Howe, erupting in a fury like Hitler in a Downfall parody.  I should have just walked away and let the topic drop, but didn’t. So I mention it here only as a “colorful highlight” and will drop it now to give you some of the latest headlines via Memeorandum:

Gingrich Is Well-Positioned
as South Carolina Votes
— New York Times

Doubts creep in as an awkward Mitt Romney
tries not to lose the GOP nod
— The Hill

Poll shows big swing as S.C. votes
— CBS News

Mitt Romney Campaign Begins Preparing
For Possible South Carolina Loss
— Huffington Post

America hates Newt Gingrich
— The Washington Examiner

Here’s video of Craig Robinson interviewing Rick Santorum last night:

Santorum’s party tonight will be at the Citadel in Charleston, while the other candidates will all be having their Primary Night events in Columbia. If Perry’s supporters are in a mood to celebrate tonight, they should go to the party thrown by the Romney campaign, to which they unwittingly lent such valuable assistance.

“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”

Now I’ve got to take a nap, so I don’t get irritable again. I’m so tired I almost forgot the Five Most Important Words in the English Language: Hit the freaking tip jar!




PREVIOUSLY:


Romney No’ Doin’ So Weel In SC?

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by Smitty

Leahy at Bearing Drift reports from South Carolina:

I was out of the political loop for a spell yesterday and so missed Bob McDonnell’s arrival in the state to stump alongside Mitt Romney in what appears to be, and feels like, a spectacular collapse in support for the former Massachusetts Governor. Romney, who was leading by double figures just a week ago now admits he could lose today.
A thoroughly unscientific poll I took of a group of Columbia residents on McDonnell’s visit and endorsement drew a surprisingly uniform response: “Who is Bob McDonnell?”
Even after I explained who Bob was, and how Romney had once said he he would make a good vice presidential pick, I got shrugs in return.
Sorry Bob, South Carolina just isn’t that into you. Or at least not yet.

Read the whole, interesting thing. If Newt takes SC, that means that we have three winners across the first three states. Santorum, it could be argued, should have won Iowa by a much bigger margin, if not for eight mysteriously vanished precincts. Not That The Fix Was In, mind you.

It doesn’t look like Ron Paul will make a fourth winner in as many states on 31 January in Florida. Northern Cuba seems interested in the dark haired version of Charlie Crist.

Call me perverted, but I think all of this competition is a Good Thing. Voters need to realize that we’re looking for a human being as a presidential candidate, no some kind of savior. They all, uniquely, suck. Have your say, get your opinion out and your vote in, then stand by to shelve the emotions and get that GOP nominee elected.

Also good: Romney staying with the debates. They appeal to my finely honed sense of masochism.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy, who is live in SC with coverage.

Rick Santorum Crashes Blog Bash, Impresses Conservative New Media

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Rick Santorum answers questions at Blog Bash party Friday in Charleston, S.C.
At left is Alice Linahan, who arranged his attendance at the event.

CHARLESTON, S.C.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum made a surprise appearance Friday night at an invitation-only party for conservative New Media, drinking beer, eating pizza and taking questions from bloggers and talk radio hosts.

Santorum answered on-the-record questions from many of the party attendees, including Tony Katz of All Patriots Media, Craig Robinson of TheIowaRepublican.com, Caleb Howe of Red State and Javier Manjarres of the Shark Tank, who asked Santorum about the controversy surrounding an ABC News interview with Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife:

Javier Manjarres: “You being a social conservative, do you think his past personal issues with social conservatives?”
Rick Santorum: “You have to ask social conservatives on that. The national media has been despicable in what they have done to me over the past 15 or 20 years, and what they’re doing to me right now, as you all know. These are lowlifes who dig up everything to try to undercut you and take you off your game and distract away from the real issues we’re dealing with. What you do in your public life and what you do while you’re in public life, to me, is fair game. Some of these things Newt did when he was Speaker and in public life and that, to me, is a fair-game issue. That subject [Gingrich’s divorce] is one thing. Getting into the salacious details is quite a different thing and, to me, out of bounds. “

The party, sponsored by Ali Akbar’s Blog Bash organization, was held at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel that is media headquarters for the Southern Republican Leaadership Conference which is meeting this weekend in Charleston. Santorum’s attendance at the event was arranged by Alice Linahan of Voices Empower.

UPDATE: Santorum’s answers on issues and discussion of his campaign strategy were solid, but what impressed the bloggers in attendance was his accessibility and relaxed demeanor. Few bloggers have had a chance to see Santorum outside of debates and campaign appearances.

Santorum arrived at the party — having been next door in the Fox News temporary studio for an interview with Sean Hannity — with his wife Karen and daughter Sarah, as well as several staffers, volunteers and supporters. Santorum helped himself to pizza, chicken tenders and a Blue Moon Ale. Before he could eat, however, several bloggers insisted on interviewing him.

After answering their questions, Santorum sat down to eat and was joined at his table by pollster Dick Morris, who had also been at the Fox News temporary studio at the Marriott. Several bloggers captured their conversation on camera, and continued asking questions, which Santorum answered. He went back for seconds at the buffet — getting three more slices of pizza and a Sam Adams Boston Lager.

UPDATE II: Bryan Preston of PJ Media has more about Santorum’s appearance at Friday’s blog party. During the event, Santorum was endorsed by conservative voter-integrity activist Anita Montrcrief, who blew the whistle on ACORN.

I’ll try to get more video and photos online after a while.

Will Folks: Now His Sacred Honor Compels Him to Gay-Bait … Me?

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CHARLESTON, S.C.
Longtime readers will perhaps need no introduction to Will Folks, the South Carolina political gossip blogger who made himself an infamous laughingstock by claiming to have had an affair with Nikki Haley. The vile human stain whom I dubbed “Deuce Bigalow, Blogger Gigolo” is now supporting Ron Paul — go figure — and when I expressed suspicion about his “Elizabeth Reichert” exclusive, was provoked to a series of Twitter eruptions, including these:


Right: He misspells “please,” while calling me “ignorant.” As I long ago observed, “Will Folks is going to keep this up until his skull has an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with somebody’s tire iron.”

Because bad thing happen to bad people.

UPDATE: In a post at his site, Will Folks engages in his usual annoying distraction technique: Referring to himself in third person as “our founding editor” and “Sic Willie,” while pretending that there was nothing suspicious about either the “Elizabeth Reichert” flyer or his own astonishingly rapid acquisition of the complete text of the flyer.

Keep in mind that the Ron Paul people have been doing dirty tricks — including the use of anonymous flyers — since Iowa. Folks is an admitted supporter of Ron Paul, and this flyer was surreptitiously distributed on the windshields of cars at a pro-life event where the Paulistas were out in force.

So I come out to the parking lot, get the flyer, drive to a McDonald’s to file my American Spectator column and, while I’m at it, decide to Google this “Elizabeth Reichert” to see if such a person exists. And the only reference to her online as of 10 p.m. Wednesday was … Will Folks at FITS News, who had managed not only to transcribe the 388-word flyer, but also to write a 475-word “news” story about it, in which he said, “Allegations are flying among the rival 2012 camps, but at the moment a majority of fingers are being pointed at Perry’s campaign.”

BULLSHIT.

No fingers were “being pointed” at the time he wrote that, because the flyer hadn’t appeared on car windshields at the Greenville Hilton until barely an hour earlier. There had not been enough time for Folks to contact any sources (you’ll notice that no sources were even mentioned, much less named, in his “news” story). Folks lives in Columbia — an hour-and-a-half drive from Greenville — and yet was able to get hold of the text of this flyer and transcribe it in less time than it took me to drive to McDonald’s and log onto their free WiFi.

And to return to my original question: “Who Is Elizabeth Reichert?” Read the Will Folks story and you’ll see he refers to her as a “pro-life activist,” but we have no reason to suppose that she is such an “activist,” if she even exists. Prior to Folks’s reporting of this mysterious flyer, there was no online record of her, certainly not in connection with any sort of pro-life activism.

So: How did Folks get hold of the flyer? Was he in Greenville that night? Three presidential candidates — Santorum, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich — spoke in person at the pro-life forum, while Ron Paul appeared via satellite TV hookup. If Folks was in Greenville to cover that event, where are his reports of those candidates’ appearances? Did he decide that what the candidates said at the forum was less newsworthy than this flyer distributed in the parking lot of the Hilton?

You see what I mean by “suspicious”? One suspects that, unless Folks himself wrote this flyer, it was written by one of his fellow Ron Paul supporters, who informed him in advance and provided him with the text of the flyer by e-mail, so that all he had to do was to cut and paste it and hit the “publish” button the minute his fellow Paulista informed him that the flyer had, in fact, been distributed. And the “fingers pointing at  Perry” riff was just a lie to distract attention from the probable fact that it was Will Folks’s Paulista pals who were responsible for the flyer.

On his own site, Folks is trying to treat these suspicions as a joke, while on his Twitter accounts, he’s calling me every obscenity in his limited vocabulary: This is the behavior of a liar caught in a lie.

You hear me, Folks? You’re a liar, and a disgraceful coward, to boot.

Deadline Hell in South Carolina

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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley spins for Mitt Romney
after the CNN debate, Jan. 19, 2012

CHARLESTON, S.C.
Last night was one of those deadline nightmares that occasionally occurs when I’m exhausted, trying to make sense of a complex situation with a brain numbed by fatigue. I only got about four hours sleep after my 479-mile round-trip journey upstate Wednesday, and news was breaking fast Thursday, when I spent the afternoon down at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, which is strung out at multiple sites over a four-block space in downtown Charleston.

By the time I left the North Charleston Convention Center last night about 11, I’d written the first 200 words of my column, then returned to the Marriott on Meeting Street, media headquarters for the SRLC, intending to finish up quickly. But Bryan Preston of PJ Media was here and we got to talking and by the time I filed the column it was 2 a.m. By the time I got back to the hotel where I’m staying with Ali Akbar of NotMittRomney.com, it was almost 3.

So I slept until nearly 10 a.m. today and then chewed up a bunch of time trying to upload video, which was thwarted by an uncooperative hotel WiFi system and by the time I finally gave up on that, it was time for us to come back downtown for Ali to moderate a panel discussion about vote fraud. Then we went to eat at a barbecue place on King Street — my 13-year-old son pronounced it the best food he’d ever eaten in his life — and I got back to the Marriott about 4 p.m.

All of this, you see, to explain the paucity of blogging this Friday, which is the one day of the week when I don’t have a deadline for the Spectator.

Last night after the debate, I was nearly crushed in a media scrum surrounding Rick Santorum, the only one of the candidates who appeared in the “spin room” at the convention center:


Reporters were wedged into such a tight circle around the candidate — TV camera crews and photographers were packing in three-deep — that it probably would have been illegal in South Carolina before the Supreme Court ruled state sodomy laws unconstitutional. But I got the quote I needed for the lead of my American Spectator column:

The race for the Republican presidential nomination has finally come down the Final Four, and the swift reduction of the field helped make Thursday night’s debate here arguably the most entertaining of the 17 televised debates during this long campaign.
Yet the debate was in some sense anti-climactic, coming as it did on the heels of so much drama elsewhere on the South Carolina campaign trail. “The last 24 hours, I think, will go down in primary history as probably one of the most tumultuous 24 hours that we’ve seen,” former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said after the debate at the North Charleston Convention Center, televised on CNN.
Thursday’s biggest developments in the campaign preceded the debate by several hours. First, ABC News began releasing excerpts of its interview with Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, who claimed that the former House Speaker had asked her to have an “open marriage.” Next, officials in Iowa reported that the final count from the Jan. 3 caucus showed that Santorum had beaten former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney there. Then, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called a press conference to announce that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Gingrich.
Perry was the second candidate to drop out of the race this week, following Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s withdrawal Monday. This winnowing of the Republican field in South Carolina, strangely delayed after the usual proving grounds of Iowa and New Hampshire, produced a quartet of candidates — Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul — who mixed it up in a feisty battle that began with a volatile exchange between Gingrich and CNN moderator John King. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

UPDATE: And now the headlines via Memeorandum:

Fake CNN email used as dirty trick in South Carolina
— CNN

Clemson Palmetto Poll finds Gingrich leading,
20% of S.C. voters still uncommitted
— Clemson University

Romney’s ‘Prevent Defense’
Yielding Big Gains to Opponents
— New York Times

It looks like Newt will win here and — even though I’m for Santorum — that’s good news. Somebody had to beat Romney here to stop his momentum. Santorum beat Romney in Iowa and if Gingrich beats Romney in South Carolina, then all three candidates will be 1-for-3, and the campaign continues.

Some Things Never Change

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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
During tonight’s debate, Mitt Romney started talking about his father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 and subsequently served in Nixon’s cabinet. When I heard that, I reached into my computer bag and retrieved a book I carry with me everywhere on the campaign trail.

“I went to Nixon’s inauguration [in January 1969]. Washington was a sea of mud and freezing rain. As the Inaugural Parade neared the corner of 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue, some freak threw a half-gallon wine jug at the convertible carrying the commandant of the Marine Corps . . . and as one-time Presidential candidate George Romney passed by in his new role as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the mob on the sidewalk began chanting, ‘Romney eats shit! Romney eats shit!’”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

Perry Campaign Post Mortem:
Doomed From the Start

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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
Several years ago I picked up a book called The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents, which is a major reason why, whenever I travel by air, I always pray before takeoff.

Because what you will learn from studying air disasters is that takeoff is the most dangerous part of any flight and, in many cases, the people who died were doomed from the time they boarded the plane. An undetected mechanical malfunction or a bungle by the maintenance crew and, from the time that jet rolls away from the gate, there is no hope for anyone aboard that doomed plane. They bought their ticket, and they are going to die.

Which brings us to Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. First the headlines:

Perry quits race, backs Gingrich
— The State (Columbia, S.C.)

Perry’s Speech, Dropping Out, Endorsing Newt
— Ace of Spades

Perry’s Voters May Not Flock to Gingrich
— New York Times

Rick Perry Announces End to His Presidential Bid
— Time

I was there at the Hyatt Park for today’s press conference, along with Dave Weigel of Slate, Byron York of the Washington Examiner, Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times, Willie Geist of MSNBC and dozens of other reporters. When Perry said, “I’ve always believed the mission is more important than the man,” I remembered that Perry was an Air Force pilot, and thought about The Black Box, because Perry’s campaign was doomed from the moment it began.

Rick Perry is a good man, and he deserved a better campaign than he got, but his political advisers — Dave Carney and those other guys — had all the wrong ideas, and thus Perry’s “mission” was destined to failure from the outset. Exactly how these men, so widely hailed as shrewd strategists, got so many things so badly wrong is a story that I’m sure will be the subject of many campaign post mortems, like Jennifer Jacobs’s excellent examination of what went wrong with Michele Bachmann’s campaign. But I have neither time nor inclination to offer a full analysis today.

What is important today is to realize that there was never really any hope that Rick Perry could win the presidency. All the hype generated about Perry’s candidacy last summer was mistaken, based on a flawed assumptions about the candidate, about his campaign staff, about the entire strategic conception of the Perry campaign.

It was all wrong, wrong, wrong, from the very beginning, an utter waste of time, money and effort, and everyone involved would have been better off if Perry had never run at all. Instead of asking, “What went wrong?” we should be asking simply, “Why?”

But that question is one that Perry’s most vocal supporters — who loudly and repeatedly proclaimed  their candidate the only viable alternative to Mitt Romney — do not wish to0 contemplate. And so I will simply link my American Spectator report on the Perry press conference, which ought to be the final word on this tragic folly.

It won’t, of course, because the campaign will continue, until it is at least recognized that Perry’s endorsement of Newt “Share Me” Gingrich, like everything else about the Perry campaign, has proved to be a mistake.

And then no one will give me credit for that prediction, either.