With time and money running out for many presidential candidates, South Carolina politics often turns nasty – Syracuse Post

Mitt Romney’s campaign, just a few
weeks away from the 2008 presidential primary in a state where
evangelicals look skeptically on the former Massachusetts governor’s
Mormon faith, condemned the bogus card as politics at its worst. The
sender never took credit. And it was just another anonymous shot in the
endless volleys of nasty campaigning in South Carolina.

While
attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina’s reputation for
electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned.

Why
there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always
picked the GOP’s eventual nominee since the primary’s inception in 1980.
And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone
but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading
challengers to go for the jugular.

“The ghost
of Lee Atwater hangs over South Carolina like a morning fog and
permeates every part of the state’s politics,” says Scott Huffmon, a
Winthrop University political science professor. Atwater, who died 20
years ago, was South Carolina’s most famous political operative and a
master of slash-and-burn politics.

File photo / AP, 1988Lee Atwater, then-campaign manager for Vice President George Bush, is seen prior to a July 24, 1988, taping of CBS-TV’s “Face The Nation” in Washington. While attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina’s reputation for electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned. Why there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always picked the GOP’s eventual nominee since the primary’s inception in 1980. And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading challengers to go for the jugular.

Given the
dynamics of this year’s Republican presidential race, it’s safe to
expect under-the-radar attacks over the next week as challengers work to
derail front-runner Romney before the Jan. 21 primary. The rise of
super PACs – outside groups aligned with but independent from the
candidates – means some of the attacks could be more public this time,
but still nasty.

“You’ve got four guys that
are make or break,’ said Warren Tompkins, a veteran South Carolina
political consultant advising Romney. “Desperate men do desperate
things.”

Romney says he’s ready for whatever comes his way.

“Politics
ain’t beanbags, and I know it’s going to get tough,” the GOP
front-runner said as he headed south after his New Hampshire victory.
“But I know that is sometimes part of the underbelly of politics.”

The
lore of negative attacks here includes a whisper campaign against
Republican John McCain in 2000 that included rumors that the daughter
his family adopted from Bangladesh was the Arizona senator’s
illegitimate black child.

Those were desperate
times for George W. Bush’s campaign. McCain had just stunned the
establishment’s choice with a blowout win in New Hampshire, and Bush had
just 18 days to turn the momentum around in South Carolina. Publicly,
Bush took a few shots at McCain, but mostly stressed he was the true
conservative. But plenty of ugliness was happening behind the scenes.

People
who attended rallies or debates found flyers on their car windshields
with the accusations about McCain’s daughter and raising questions about
his mental stability. Callers, pretending to be pollsters, would ask
loaded questions of voters about whether they could support a man who
had homosexual experiences or a Vietnam hero who was really was a
traitor. The sponsors of the false attacks were careful to leave no
trail.

Alone, none of the charges was all that believable. But their combined weight dragged McCain down.

How
careful were the folks attacking McCain? Exit polls after Bush won the
2000 primary with 53 percent of the vote found that nearly half of South
Carolina voters felt that McCain had made unfair attacks, compared to
only about a third who felt Bush was unfair.

View full sizeFile photo / AP, 2008Then-Republican Presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., waves on the eve of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary in this photo from Jan. 18, 2008. The lore of negative attacks in South Carolina includes a whisper campaign against Republican John McCain in 2000 that included rumors that the daughter his family adopted from Bangladesh was the Arizona senator’s illegitimate black child.McCain learned a lesson, and in 2008 responded quickly to almost every negative attack, winning the state’s primary.

That
was the same year that the bogus Mormon holiday card was sent to GOP
activists and that the web site PhonyFred.org sprang up during the GOP
primary to anonymously attack Republican candidate Fred Thompson. There
also were automated phone calls raising doubts about one candidate or
another. And, of course, whisper campaigns crop up every four years.

South
Carolina’s Democratic primary didn’t begin until 1992, and doesn’t have
the same must-win reputation as does the GOP primary, but it does still
tend to get nasty. In 2008, former president Bill Clinton spent
several days in the state campaigning for his wife and making the point
that Barack Obama was unelectable in part because of his race. Even as
an Obama win in the primary seemed inevitable, Clinton kept reminding
reporters that Jesse Jackson won the state caucuses in 1984 and 1988 and
went nowhere.

Below-the-belt political
attacks have a long tradition in the state, curried by political
operatives like Atwater who during the 1980s essentially built the
Republican Party from scratch in South Carolina.

In
1980, Texas Gov. John Connally was strongly challenging Ronald Reagan,
who had won the New Hampshire primary, when there were anonymous charges
that Connally was “trying to buy the black vote.” Reagan won the state
and the nomination. Later, it leaked out that Atwater was behind the
racial accusations against Connally.

The rough-and-tumble politics go even further back.

Opponents
of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, who served from 1954 to 2003,
sometimes challenged him to fistfights after speeches early in his
career because his attacks were so personal. The only assault ever to
happen on the floor of the U.S. Senate occurred in 1856 when South
Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks beat Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
with a cane so severely it took Sumner three years to recover. The
beating happened after Sumner gave a speech condemning slavery in the
years before the Civil War.

To be sure, negative attacks don’t always work.

Just
two years ago in the GOP’s gubernatorial primary, Nikki Haley survived
allegations she had an extramarital affair and won the race. The
now-governor’s accuser presented cellphone records that showed they
enjoyed late-night chats but no proof they had an intimate relationship.

Of
course, in the world of dirty South Carolina politics, there’s a
conspiracy theory: Some observers suggest the allegations were planted
to get Haley sympathy and make her look stronger as she fought back.

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