South Carolina Politics

No less a personage than former Gov. Mark Sanford, who has returned from not walking on the Appalachian Trail, is worried about the wreckage that will be left behind by Saturday's Republican primary. "We have a rough-cut side to politics that ...  

Jim Crow and Strom Thurmond are long gone, but race remains central to tax and spending issues -- perhaps an omen for national politics. COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Race is no longer as overt a factor in South Carolina politics as it was when Strom Thurmond, who is ...  

Peter Hamby has a nice debunking of some myths of South Carolina politics.  For one, some instances of negative campaigning were widely discussed but never quite confirmed.  For another, the negative campaigning that does occur may not work.  See also my discussion of the academic literature on negative campaigning, which finds exactly that. Jordan Ragusa adds another valuable point.  Rather than assuming that South Carolina’s “culture...  

No Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1980 has gone on to take the party’s nomination without first winning South Carolina. And as the path to the White House winds through the back-country of Clemson, Aiken, and Myrtle Beach, it’s known to be littered ...  

I am feeling totally cheated. The New Hampshire primary is over, and none of the Republicans went away. This is not how things are supposed to work in the United States. Every week, one contestant is supposed to be eliminated. That's the way it ...