Old-School GOP Threatened In SC

Politico reports:

SPARTANBURG, S.C. – For 30 years this state has served as the firewall for establishment Republican presidential hopefuls, the place where insurgents who emerged from Iowa and New Hampshire went to die.

In 2012, that tradition might end.

GOP activists attending county party conventions last weekend here and in next-door Greenville County – the heart of the conservative Upstate –made scant mention of Mitt Romney, Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty. Instead, the talk is of Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump and even Allen West, a rookie Florida congressman who’s shown no interest in running for president.

The state that’s been the establishment’s bulwark, it seems, is being buffeted by the same grassroots forces of change that are remaking the GOP elsewhere.

The amorphous shape of the 2012 field is clearly having an effect in South Carolina. There is no George W. Bush-type candidate who can unite both the Christian conservative wing of the party and the country club donor set, as the then-Texas governor did in 2000. Nor is there even a John McCain or a Romney, circa 2008, vacuuming up endorsements and laying down early markers.

But more important, conservatives here, as elsewhere, have been radicalized. What began as disappointment in the fiscal sins they believe were committed by the Bush White House has now turned into rage and fear over the policies pursued by President Obama, who they see as nothing short of a wild-eyed liberal intent on turning America into France.

South Carolina Republicans are as conservative as they’ve ever been, but now it’s of a different nature. Old hang-ups about race are fading – Republicans elected an Indian-American governor and African-American congressman last year – and giving way to a more generic, national sort of conservatism that demands ideological purity, especially on fiscal issues.

It’s still the Bible Belt—and Romney’s Mormonism will spook some evangelical voters. But likely to hurt him just as much, if not more, will be his effort to bring universal healthcare to Massachusetts amid broader questions about his fealty to small-government principles.

“Americans all over wanted their government to get a handle on spending, to be more fiscally conservative and South Carolina is following suit,” said former state House Speaker David Wilkins, an uber-connected Republican who helped Bush win the state in 2000. “What happened in South Carolina is not too different from what happened in the rest of country.”

And just as the hunger for an ever more unadulterated brand of conservatism grows among grassroots activists, the power of endorsements and connections here wanes.

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