Mike Scruggs On Immigration, Ron Paul’s (Mixed) Chances In South Carolina
Posted By Peter Brimelow On 13 January 2008

[Peter Brimelow writes: I met Mike Scruggs at Stanford’s business school when he was only just back from Vietnam in 1970. In recent years, we reconnected through the miracle of the internet and he has written for VDARE.COM several times. He just sent me this assessement of the immigration issue’s impact on the upcoming South Carolina primary.]

I only live about 10 miles from the SC border and about 50 miles from Greenville, SC. Greenville is more conservative, more white, more religious, and more Republican than most of the rest of SC.

Ron Paul has a lot of support, but I predict about half of them will vote for somebody else because they don’t think he can win and want to make sure another candidate does not win–usually McCain, sometimes Huckabee. One person told me his wife–a conservative/religious activist who favors Paul–was planning on voting for Romney to try and prevent McCain or Huckabee from winning.

Paul’s foreign policy positions-or at least his perceived foreign policy positions–hurt him badly. He needs to distinguish his position from the standard Democrat position. This is a region that respects military personnel, veterans, etc. (except for the city of Asheville).

Also Paul often addresses what seem to many people to be esoteric economic issues, when what they want to hear first and more directly is 1. What is he going to do about immigration 2. Jobs, 3. specifically how he plans to exit Iraq, etc. He needs to put propositions first and explanations second.

Although many of the political activist sorts including conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants are on to Huckabee (wary of his record), most Protestant Evangelicals are not on to Huck’s record and favor him so far.

A sizeable number of them feel that because he is a born-again Christian, he will automatically do the right thing.

Several weeks ago at a Republican County Executive meeting in Hendersonville an older fellow was called on to give the prayer before beginning (probably not a practice in northeastern states). I almost fell out of my chair and did drop my clip-board when he prayed something like this.: “Lord please bless our President because he is a born-again Christian, and we know he will do the right thing.â€