N.H. is next, but S.C. is key

By ALEXANDER BURNS and EMILY SCHULTHEIS | 1/5/12 7:26 AM


By ALEXANDER BURNS and EMILY SCHULTHEIS | 1/5/12 4:30 AM EST

NASHUA, N.H. — The Republican presidential candidates have swept into New Hampshire so swiftly, you might be tricked into thinking that next Tuesday’s primary really matters.
But with Mitt Romney’s dominance here still unshaken, the other members of the GOP field are already plotting to make their strongest stand against the national front-runner in South Carolina — a conservative state in the heart of a region in which Romney has long struggled to break through.

While the results from the Iowa caucuses and a stream of national primary polling confirm that Republicans haven’t settled on Romney as their 2012 candidate, none of his rivals has yet been able to vault ahead of the pack and mount a sustained challenge to the former Massachusetts governor.
Now, Republicans in and outside the presidential campaigns believe South Carolina is the best — and maybe the only — opportunity left to put Romney’s grasp on the nomination in real peril.

“South Carolina will become the ground on which an ‘ABM’ movement starts to coalesce — the anybody-but-Mitt crowd,” said Republican strategist and veteran South Carolina hand Tucker Eskew. “Perhaps not successfully, but there will be a drive to coalesce that vote.”
For conservatives in particular, Eskew said the state is the most logical place to begin “concentrating firepower on Gov. Romney’s right flank.”
Romney’s opponents plainly agree.
Even before the start of the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich was pointing to South Carolina as the place where he would aim to take out Romney.
“The gap between Romney’s moderate Massachusetts views and Southern conservatism is, oh, about the distance from Boston to Charleston,” Gingrich said at one campaign stop.

Rick Perry is staking his whole campaign on the state, effectively skipping New Hampshire. The Texan lobbed a Gingrich-like attack in Romney’s direction in a CNN interview before the caucuses: “A Massachusetts governor that put individual mandates in place that Obama took as the model to create Obamacare is not going to sell in South Carolina.”
And for weeks, Iowa almost-winner Rick Santorum has told voters that he hoped to finish strong in Iowa, beat expectations in New Hampshire — and then truly take control of the race in South Carolina.
The result, New Hampshire politicos acknowledge, is that the next major inflection point in the GOP presidential race is less likely to be the Jan. 10 primary here, but 11 days later, when Republicans head to the polls in the first-in-the-South primary. Only Jon Huntsman, who has practically lived in New Hampshire, is expected to see his campaign live or die on the results here.
“If you can’t have a breakout moment in one of the first three states, you’re in trouble, and, for all of the conservatives, South Carolina is the most fertile ground,” said Charlie Arlinghaus, the New Hampshire politico who heads the conservative Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. “New Hampshire has been quieter this year than it’s been in the past because Romney has been so dominant here.”

The diversity of South Carolina’s Republican voters, as well as the number of Romney rivals in the race, mean the state isn’t certain to break for a conservative insurgent. Michele Bachmann’s exit from the race Tuesday winnows the field of candidates who could appeal to Palmetto State conservatives, but Perry’s decision to fight on — to the surprise of his staff — complicates the search for one anti-Romney alternative.
While South Carolina Republicans tend to be more hard-line than New Hampshire voters, the state also has a sizable population of upscale, economy-oriented Republicans, as well as military veterans who don’t necessarily vote on purely ideological impulses.


That made it possible for John McCain to win the state four years ago with a third of the primary vote, as Mike Huckabee pulled 30 percent and Fred Thompson 16 percent, with Romney 1 percentage point behind him.
Romney’s 15 percent baseline isn’t a formidable place to start. If, as in Iowa, Romney were to draw approximately the same amount of support as he did in 2008 — or slightly less — he would likely be soundly beaten.
For that to happen, one or more of the remaining would-be Romney slayers would likely have to drop out of the race and join a concerted push to derail the former Massachusetts governor — a prospect some conservatives believe is well within the realm of possibility.
“I don’t think Newt or Rick [Santorum] want to be Fred Thompson,” said David Bossie, who heads the conservative group Citizens United. “They are both dedicated to Mitt not being the nominee.”
South Carolina state Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican who has not endorsed a candidate in the primary, said he already detected a movement of support toward Santorum in the aftermath of the Pennsylvanian’s strong Iowa showing.
“I think people in South Carolina are very politically savvy, and they like to back who they perceive is a winner. And I see a lot of social conservative votes going from [Michele] Bachmann and Perry to Santorum,” Davis said. “People more or less in South Carolina know Mitt Romney. It’s not a question of them trying to figure out who he is or what he stands for. But Santorum’s showing in Iowa greatly helps him because it gives him a megaphone and a platform and a bully pulpit.”

Former South Carolina Rep. Gresham Barrett, a Santorum endorser, went a bit further and predicted that if a poll were taken in the state after Iowa, “Rick would be up there.” Santorum aides said he plans to make a visit to South Carolina as early as this weekend, and Barrett suggested he’d end up taking the “lion’s share” of support away from flagging candidates such as Perry.
Still, Santorum doesn’t have an open shot at the state’s conservative voters, and, with Perry and Gingrich vowing to stay in the race for the time being, there’s no obvious way for him to clear an avenue.
With several anti-Romney conservatives in the hunt, the former Bay State governor — who has secured the backing of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — evidently senses opportunity in a state that doesn’t look like an inviting battleground for him on paper.