Republicans are in a fix

By Lee Bandy
SouthCarolina Insider

(2/1/08) South Carolina Democrats have won the bragging rights for their better-than-expected showing in last Saturday’s presidential primary voting.

“And we are bragging,” said Carol Khare Fowler, chairwoman of the state party. “South Carolina is reflecting what is happening all over the nation.”

The race for the White House is generating intense interests and enthusiasm among the party’s rank and file.

It is significantly greater by, several measures, than the Republican contests. Democrats have set records for turnout and substantially exceeded the GOP showing.

In South Carolina, for example, more than 530,000 Democrats voted, nearly twice the party’s turnout of 2004 and nearly 20 percent higher than the Republican vote in the week before.

More Democrats than Republicans reported excitement about voting this year and a strong commitment to their candidate.

“The Republicans didn’t have a field of candidates that produced any excitement,” observed Rice University political scientist Earl Black.

“The Democrats had the most exciting primary than they have had in South Carolina in some time,” he said.

Republicans were demoralized. Even before going to the polls, they knew deep down inside their chances of winning the White House in 2008 were slim to none.

“The Republicans were at their weakest,” Black noted. “They were fractured.”

Right now there’s a power struggle going on inside the GOP. It pits evangelical Christians againsts the moderates and traditional conservatives against the more progressive younger members. On one side, there are the social and cultural conservatives, and then on the other side your fiscal conservatives.

And this year, these groups are causing some internal strife. They don’t like their choices for president. John McCain, the current frontrunner, is loathed by much of the activist corps of the GOP, threatening to derail his candidacy.

Democratic leaders say all this points to a united, enthusiastic party that can expand the map of Democratic victories.

Various poll data suggest Democrats are more eager to vote and are happier with their choice set than Republicans. They were happy to get out and vote.

Republicans dismiss any suggestions that this augurs well for the Democrats as they head into the general election.

In South Carolina, Democratic turnout was so high that some party leaders said the state might be in play in November.

No way. South Carolina is one of the most Republican states in the nation in presidential election years, ranking right up there with Utah and Idaho.

Fowler tried to discourage any speculation about South Carolina possibly becoming a blue state after this election.

“We haven’t reached that point yet where one could call it a blue state,” she said.

That is an extremely optimistic idea. The last time a Democratic carried the state was 32 years ago when Jimmy Carter won it.

“We’re confident that South Carolina will remain a solid Republican state,’ said S. C. GOP Chairman Katon Dawson. “The Democrats have a big hill to climb. We’ll be prepared.”

“The Democrats have hit their high water mark in South Carolina,” he said.

Winthrop University analyst Scott Huffmon said the Democratic turnout last week represented a dramatic increase over previous primaries.

But he cautioned against reading too much into that.

South Carolina will remain a red state for many more years, he predicted.

Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist, said it should be a warning sign to Republicans that 130,000 fewer South Carolinians voted in the GOP Saturday primary than in the 2000 contest between John McCain and George W. Bush.

Republicans are in a fix, or as some would say a funk. Nothing seems to be going right for them. It looks like a Democratic year, Sabato says.

President Bush and the Republican Party have managed to turn off more voters – fiscal conservatives, moderates, independents, women and evangelicals.

There is a huge divide in the Republican Party,” Sabato said, making the party “completely ineffective.”

The larger-than-expected turnout of Democratic voters encouraged the party’s rank and file.

It gave them hope.