by Rick Shaftan
The firewall in SC held solid for Bush, as conservatives, rebel flag supporters, and pro-lifers came to his rescue putting him over the top by a solid 13 points. More importantly, Bush won all six Congressional Districts and lost only Charleston County.
McCain's failure to carry Horry County (Myrtle Beach), which is populated by Northerners is a bad and pathetic sign for his future prospects. The Bush sweep of all districts (including those represented by McCain supporters Graham and Sanford) puts McCain far behind in the delegate count, considering that Bush won all 12 in Delaware. My count has 64 for Bush, 12 uncommitted (Forbes and Bauer), 11 for McCain, and 4 for Keyes. Now McCain is conceding Virginia. A loss in Michigan will knock him out as Bush will build a solid and insurmountable delegate lead.
McCain had been on the air for weeks and fell apart in the final days. Bush owes Forbes a big one for pulling out and letting him consolidate most of the conservative vote (the Alan Keyes vote was directly proportionate to the Bush vote and was biggest in the heavily Evangelical upstate (Greenville-Spartanburg) area.
Bush's victory proves that the more things change the more they remain the same. Make no mistake about it, everytime the media talked about "Democrats and Independents" supporting McCain, most South Carolinians heard "Black Voters." Hyping a large black turnout is the old trick used to turn out a large white vote and it still works today. McCain even lost the black majority Sixth Congressional District, where this strategy would obviously work best with minority whites.
The real fool here was Steve Forbes. Had he stayed in, few would doubt that McCain would have won the primary and the delegate battle would remain close. This would have created enough chaos that Forbes could have hung around, collecting delegates, while the other two chewed each other up. Who knows what could happen at a convention where no candidate has 50 percent but one of the three has a lot of cash to spread around? I hope he got a good deal from the Gov.
Bush won because he made a solid appeal to conservative voters; he even had me sympathetic to him. Whether he succeeds in this election and beyond depends on whether he sticks with the people who carried him through Carolina or attempts to appeal to the PC types, media elites, abortion enthusiasts, campaign finance reform freaks, rebel flag burners, and Al Gore supporters who suffered such a humiliating defeat in Dixie last night.
February 21, 2000
Rick Shaftan is a campaign consultant in New Jersey.
