Bandy on Romney in SC
The State and The Politico have partnered up for the 2008 race. Here is Lee Bandy’s analysis of the Romney camp in SC from The Politico:
Romney overcomes ‘southern inquisition’
By Lee Bandy
After months of languishing in last place in the polls in South Carolina, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has emerged as the top “conservative” candidate to stop Rudy Giuliani.
He is the one presidential candidate who stands a chance of ending the presidential ambitions of the socially liberal former New York mayor, conservative leaders say.
Romney fits the profile, they maintain: He’s a clear thinker, tough-minded but open-minded, well-respected and squeaky clean.
But to accomplish his mission, he must slay a fellow conservative Republican, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and ordained Southern Baptist minister.
That will not come easy, with new polls showing Huckabee’s candidacy on the rise. He has moved ahead of Romney in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.
The two are neck and neck in South Carolina (along with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson).
Romney’s plan is to win the early contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina — and to sail on to the nomination, eliminating Giuliani along the way.
The preparation didn’t come easy for Romney. He had to court and woo a bunch of skeptical Southerners and persuade them he didn’t wear horns.
Though known for their hospitality, Southerners were reluctant to welcome this Yankee into their homes. Being from Massachusetts, that hotbed of liberalism, complicated matters. He was suspect from the moment he set foot in South Carolina.
His flip-flop on hot-button issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage (he now says he opposes both) crippled his plans to reach out to evangelicals, who make up a third of the GOP primary voters in South Carolina.
If that were not enough, Romney’s Mormon faith threatened to torpedo his election campaign. The Southern Baptist church, the largest denomination in the South, labeled Mormonism a cult.
In short, Romney faced the Southern Inquisition — South Carolina style.
But today, his is the best-run campaign organization in South Carolina. Many of the same people who ran George W. Bush’s successful 2000 presidential campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) are deeply committed to keeping Romney’s candidacy alive.
Romney wasn’t about to cede the right wing of the party to anyone. He knew what he had to do, and that was to get into a position to win the South Carolina GOP primary on Jan. 19.
There were times when he and his people wondered whether it was worth it. For months, Romney’s campaign was stuck in neutral. He couldn’t get out of single digits in the polls no matter how hard he tried.
Romney turned things around with a huge television ad campaign that is still going on today. He used it to stake out a strong conservative position on most every issue and to boost his name identification in a state that didn’t know much about him. It worked.
“Television moves numbers, and it did in this case,” said Terry Sullivan, state campaign director for Romney.
Romney is not home free yet, however. A Clemson University Palmetto Poll taken Nov. 14-27 shows an extremely tight race, with Romney in the lead (17 percent), followed by former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee (15 percent), Huckabee (13 percent), McCain (11 percent) and Giuliani (9 percent).
“Mike Huckabee has made it onto the radar [screens] of voters in the state,” said Clemson University political scientist David Woodard.
But Republican voters clearly are not thrilled with their options: 28 percent of South Carolina’s registered GOP voters remain undecided.
Asked if they are likely to stick with their choices or change their minds between now and the Jan. 19 primary, a whopping 65 percent said they are likely to change their minds.
The truth of the matter is that South Carolina is up for grabs.
Lee Bandy is a political columnist for The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., which is sharing content with Politico for the 2008 presidential campaign. He has been the political columnist for The State for 40 years, 30 of them in Washington. He is a former member of the White House Correspondents’ Association, former chairman of the Standing Committee of Correspondents and an active member of the Gridiron Club. He is a native of Asheville, N.C.