Why South Carolina Matters

"She represents a conservative movement -- a fresh, strong, energetic, positive conservative movement.   The [primary] results were remarkable. There's a new day dawning for South Carolina. We have an opportunity to be an example for the rest of the country."   ~South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster

South Carolina has always had a certain reputation for its politics going back to before the Civil War.  There has always been more intensity, more seriousness, and more controversy than any other state.  There is a direct line of leaders - mostly in the Senate - the define South Carolina politics based on race, class, and the old southern tradition.  From John Calhoun to Wade Hampton to Mathew Butler to Ben Tillman to Strom Thurmond; old South Carolina has been defined  by these men, their conservatism, and their racism.  And as South Carolina has come to the Republican Party, so too has the Republican Party had to deal with that past.  As this DCPost article shows, GOP leaders from Lee Atwater to Carroll Campbell to the 2000 GOP presidential primary. 

And it's been on display in the 2012 gubernatorial election in the Palmetto State.  As the McMaster quote above suggests, Haley's apparent election - too be chosen next Saturday - is monumental moment for the GOP in the South.  Nikki Haley, along with congressional candidate Tim Scott, could finally prove to the country that there is a new conservative movement for everyone.  And South Carolina, with its history and perceptions, is a powerful place for this to be proven.  If Haley pulls this off and gets elected in November, in the face of the smears and history of South Carolina politics, I think it will send a major message that conservatism is for everyone and hopefully the Republican Party can understand that this new, young conservatism that is rising across the country - different from the Bush era neocons and big-government Republicans - is open to everyone. 

Comments

[Ron]

Another interesting note on the "ethnic" history of South Carolina:

The colony of South Carolina elected a Jewish representative, Francis Salvador, around 1774. Salvador thus became the first Jew elected to anything anywhere in over 1,700 years. Francis Salvador urged signing the Declaration of Independence. Less than a month after the Declaration of Independence was signed, Francis Salvador was killed (scalped) in fighting with the British.

[Bruce]

Following Ron's history lesson, Judah Benjamin was born and raised in South Carolina. His father was a prominent member of Charleston's large Jewish community. Benjamin moved to Louisiana where he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He later served as Treasury Secretary, then Attorney General and finally Secretary of State for the Confederate States of America -- making him the first Jewish cabinet level official in North America.

[Chris]

Bruce, he THEN moved to England where he became a world-renowed barrister and lawyer in England well into the 1880s. Benjamin is one of the most interesting people of the civil war era. Charleston in the pre-war days was very diverse and also had a large free black population.

[Just wondering]

And many of those free blacks in the South and in the North were also slave owners. Are the descendants of free black slave owners eligible for affirmative action? Wonder what Jesse and Al would have to say about that?