Six weeks before South Carolina Republicans and Democrats cast their primary votes for president, the races remain very much up in the air.
On the Democratic side, most polls show Sen. Hillary Clinton with a comfortable lead in South Carolina, but some also show her support slipping in Iowa, giving fresh hope to Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, her main rivals.
On the Republican side, what many considered a four-way race between former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson now shapes up as a five-way contest, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joining the party.
Huckabee dropped by North Charleston
on Friday as part of a swing through South Carolina.
He came to bask in his rising support and to accept endorsements from Charleston County Council Chairman Tim Scott and from Maurice Washington, chairman of the board of trustees of South Carolina State University.
Huckabee also discussed his nine-point plan for immigration reform, which calls for building a fence along the Mexican border by 2010, hiring more Border Patrol agents, imposing fines on employers who hire illegal immigrants, promoting immigration-law training for local police and modernizing the process of legal immigration.
He said his proposal doesn’t include amnesty and would give those here illegally 120 days to leave the country and apply to return through legal means. Those who don’t leave would be deported and have to wait 10 years to legally return. “It’s not to be harsh but rather it’s to be fair to all,” he said.
Supporters of the Fair Tax, a plan to replace the national income tax with a national sales tax, made up a good-sized chunk of the 100-plus people who crammed into a North Charleston hotel conference room to hear Huckabee.
Charleston County GOP Chairwoman Lin Bennett, a Thompson supporter, noted that Huckabee’s position as the only front-runner who has endorsed the tax gives him a built-in base here. “These Fair Tax people, wherever you go, there are gazillions of them.”
Meanwhile, other candidates are sending spouses here to solidify their support.
Former President Bill Clinton will appear here today, while Thompson’s wife Jeri plans to meet with supporters at 5:15 p.m. Monday at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant.
Huckabee said he believes his poll numbers have risen recently for several reasons, including his debate performances and a few extended televised interviews. He said martial arts star Chuck Norris’ endorsement helped, noting that almost every television network ran Norris’ endorsement spot for free as a news item, and it was the most watched video on YouTube for two days.
He also joked about another big-time endorser coming to South Carolina: Multimedia star Oprah Winfrey will appear Sunday at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia with Obama.
“I respect very much that Senator Obama has Oprah, but in a smackdown, Chuck wins every time,” he said.
While a few polls show Huckabee in the lead in South Carolina, others show a virtual dead heat among several candidates.
“There are a lot of unknowns this year, a lot of new territory,” said College of Charleston political science professor Bill Moore.
“On the Democratic side, the race pits a woman candidate and an African-American candidate,” he said. “On the Republican side, you simply don’t have any one candidate who has captured the imagination of the Republicans. On top of that, everything is front-loaded this year, so it’s just unchartered territory.”
Despite what South Carolina polls show this month, the numbers here likely will change as Iowans hold their caucus Jan. 3, followed by the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8. The GOP primary in South Carolina will be Jan. 19, and the Democratic primary will be Jan. 26.
“What’s going to impact most in South Carolina is what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Moore said. “If Hillary starts to falter, then South Carolina becomes a different ball game.”
Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and has been the top fundraiser among Democrats here, said during a Charleston visit Thursday that he’s not worried about his poll numbers here.
“I’m doing better than I was four years ago at this point, and I won the state four years ago,” he said. “If people in South Carolina know that I come from here, that I will fight for them, that I will stand up for the working, middle-class families that need a chance, we’ll do fine in South Carolina.”
Those early states present even higher stakes for the GOP hopefuls.
“I could see Fred Thompson out of it, or maybe John McCain, by the time they get to South Carolina,” Moore said. “To me, one of the questions that should be asked on every poll is who is your second choice. That can be important as you have people drop out.”
By Robert Behre for The Post and Courier
Posted at 3:55 pm on 01/19/08
Posted by Cheryl Emmons
By the time the primary takes place in my state, the nomination is already essentially sewed up, so my vote basically means nothing. National standards and sweeping changes of the election process are needed.
One of the changes needed relates to media coverage. Some candidates are excluded before the process even begins, which means that the race really is not wide open. During the Great Depression, Sea Biscuit defeated War Admiral and was a symbol of hope to the American people. However, even Sea Biscuit could not have won the race if he had been hobbled.
I was dismayed that Dennis Kucinich was not allowed to participate in the most recent Las Vegas debate. There is a brewing disagreement in this country about what is meant by “freedom of the press”. Did our founders intend for us to interpret freedom of the press as the right of corporations to essentially own the press and then choose what the masses are allowed to say and hear? Or, did our founders mean for us to interpret freedom of the press as the right of individuals to express themselves freely through the vehicle of the press and to have access to uncensored information through the vehicle of the press.
I take the latter view, and I felt that his exclusion, on the basis of the “freedom of the press” rights of NBC, was slap in the face to those who believe in freedom of speech for the people. The press has not only censored him, but in the act of censoring him, they have also censored those who share all, or even some, of his concerns.
He is the only candidate that actually voted against the war. He is the only candidate who supports a single payer not-for-profit health care system. He is the only candidate calling for a withdrawal from NAFTA, a trade agreement that has left many ghost towns across America . How can there truly be a debate when those with dissenting views are not allowed to be present?
After he was excluded from their health care forum, I decided never to join AARP. I stopped watching ABC after the New Hampshire debate exclusion. Now, I have now stopped watching NBC. How can we trust any network that is capable of blatantly obvious bias to tell us the truth?
It’s easy for some of the candidates to complain about Bush’s ill-fated war and gain the support of the people when there is nobody there to remind them that they voted to give him the power to launch this venture. I have kids of drafting age. I also have a co-worker who has relatives that live in Iran . What am I supposed to do if they force my sons to go shoot at his relatives? Once, when I was watching the movie Spartacus, I thought about how horrible it must have been to be to be a slave and to be forced to kill. When our kids are drafted for wars we don’t believe in, how is it any different than when Spartacus was forced to kill for his master’s pleasure? The same thing is still going on after all these centuries. There are powerful people in this country that would force our sons to kill for the pleasure of those who are living lavishly from the profits of defense companies and oil companies. Every time I hear all this saber rattling, it brings me to tears. There is a small group of powerful people in this country that wants an empire, and will they try to manipulate politicians like puppets to get what they want. Most of us don’t want an empire; we just want a decent country to live in.
A few years ago, my husband almost died due to the conduct of an insurance company. He is only here because I fought hard for his life, but I endured much verbal abuse in the process. Every year, 18,000 people die because they don’t have insurance (6 times more people than died as a consequence of the September 11th tragedy). The health insurance companies are holding the whole nation hostage, and none of the other candidates are willing to admit that this situation cannot be reversed as long as private health insurance remains as a for-profit industry.
If Mr. Kucinich is so incompetent, unqualified, and unintelligent, why doesn’t the media let him prove that by allowing him to participate in debates and by allowing him equal time? The exclusions have often been based on poll numbers, but how can a candidate gain support when he has had so little media exposure that many people don’t even know his name? It is quite clear what is happening. Every time he is allowed to speak, albeit briefly, people cheer and clap, so it has been decided that he must not be allowed to speak.
When a Kucinich supporter asked a Des Moines Register employee if he had an opinion about that debate exclusion, the reply was, “It is my job not to have an opinion.” This is freedom of speech? This is freedom of the press? God help us. We are losing our country.
The people did not elect the executives of the AARP, the Des Moines Register, ABC, or NBC. Why do they think they have the right to have this much control over the election process?
When a huge corporation that owns a defense company is allowed to buy a major media outlet and then determine who may or may not participate in a nationally televised presidential debate, all sorts of red flags should be raised concerning conflict of interest issues.
Where is the FCC, while all this is going on? They want to relax rules concerning media consolidation — as if things aren’t bad enough already?
Since NBC would not reconsider, and since the Nevada Supreme Court sided with the view that freedom of the press protects the corporate owners rather than the people, I wish they would at least give us a sensible reason why corporate rights are more worthy of protection than the rights of individuals and families. Someday, if my sons come home in body bags, or if I am trying to care for a dying relative, in excruciating pain, that has been sent home from the hospital because he or she overstayed the insurance company time limit, I at least want to know why the one candidate that cared the most was excluded.
Candidates that want to use every means possible to avoid war and who genuinely care more about sick people than about insurance companies are always called “moonbeam” candidates. This is usually meant as an insult, but it could be taken as a compliment. They are like warming, piercing rays of light, reaching through the darkness, revealing secrets that some people don’t want known and giving hope to others.
We are living in dark, frightening times, and some of us feel that they are taking away the only small ray of hope we have. We are like small, scurrying bugs, nonchalantly squashed under the steel toed boots of media giants.
It’s not just about Dennis. It’s about every candidate that really cares about us. Jerry Brown was also made fun of, even though he was the twice elected governor of the 6th largest economy in the world. Maybe, now that Dennis has been effectively silenced, we’ll never get to hear another candidate that really cares about us.
The people who made this decision should hope that Mr. Kucinich’s friend Shirley isn’t right about reincarnation. What if they had to come back here, not as powerful judges or wealthy executives, but as one of us — as one of the invisible people without a voice?