Bush Recovers in South Carolina
Background
Press commentators have described the Republican Presidential primary as a "do or die" contest for the leading contenders - Governor George W Bush and Senator John McCain. After his upset win in New Hampshire, McCain's face was vaulted onto the front page of numerous national newspapers and weeklies and his profile boosted by electronic media exposure.
Since it began in 1980, the South Carolina GOP primary has always gone on to win the Republican Party nomination. If Bush had lost here, pundits would have begun to conclude that the front runner had become outmatched by a cannier opponent, or jinxed by his perceived membership of the Republican "establishment".
George Bush's South Carolina campaign was aided by the withdrawal of publishing millionaire Steve Forbes. Forbes pulled out after placing third in the Delaware primary, a contest where he had invested heavily. In the 1996 Republican primary, Forbes had come first in Delaware and he still retained high name recognition there. His home state was New Jersey - just across the border. In 1996 Forbes had stood apart from his competitors with a bold 17% flat tax proposal and an appeal to the left wing of the party. But in 2000, Forbes had traded constituencies, becoming one of several conservative candidates competing with similar messages. Forbe's Delaware result this year confirmed that he was no longer positioned to regain national prominence, let alone win the party nomination. Bush captured all 12 delegates from Delaware under their winner-takes-all system. Once Forbes pulled out, many conservatives switched their support across to Bush.
South Carolina Result
Governor Bush collected 54% of the vote, a 13 point win over McCain. Bush's lead was strong among younger voters: scoring 55% among voters under 29 and 62% among voters between the ages of 30 to 44.
Turnout was at more than 600,000 voters, over double the turnout of 276,741 who voted in the last primary four years earlier. Some pundits had predicted that larger turnout would favour McCain, but this was not to be. Although McCain had been counting on the veterans vote, this split 47% to Bush, 47% to McCain (and 6% to Keyes). McCain's strength was among Democrats (who gave him 80% support) and independents (who gave 60% support). But most voters were Republicans and 68% of them backed Bush.
Ultimately in party primaries, the exact numbers of votes cast won matter for little. The crucial factor is how those votes translate into numbers of delegates who attend the party National Convention (these delegates select the final nominee). After the South Carolina result, the number of Bush delegates elected to attend the Republican National Convention were outnumbering the McCain delegation by a ratio of five-to-one. At 10:00pm during the Saturday night count of South Carolina results, Governor Bush had 69 delegates, against 13 for McCain, with 3 places yet to be declared.
Delegate Breakdown (at 19/1/00, 10:30pm)
Iowa (25) 10 Bush 1 McCain
Alaska (23) 8 Bush 2 McCain
New Hampshire (17) 5 Bush 10 McCain
Delaware (12) 12 Bush 0 McCain
South Carolina (37) 34 Bush 0 McCain
Total 69 Bush 13 McCain
Bush had now won four out of five contests, winning the majority of the vote in the two contests which followed New Hampshire.
Bush Campaign
Following the defeat of Governor Bush in New Hampshire, his campaign organisation was forced into a deep exercise of introspection. Numerous criticisms were being made by observers, including the following.
a) Bush's strategy for announcing his candidacy was seen to have backfired. The "Yellow Rose Garden" approach involved public appeals by senior party figures, calling on Bush to enter the Presidential race. Instead of just building an air of anticipation, the party stalwarts also made it seem that their candidate was a puppet controlled by the Republican establishment.
b) Once on the campaign trail, Bush's wooden speeches and cautious debate performances only reinforced the perception that his scripts were authored by the party establishment. Assuming that his record breaking fund-raising lead would assure his victory, Bush recited low-risk lines on the campaign trail. Bush's loss of spontaneity made it seem like he had lacked an endearing personality.
c) The Bush press machine was seen as arrogant, operating on a dull formula of feeding the media with dull standard daily statements. Bush handlers restricted access to their candidate, even cancelling scheduled press conferences if reporters became too demanding. By contrast, Governor Bush's political popularity in his own state of Texas had been partly due to the access he gave the local media and the friendly relationships he developed with them.
To recover in the South Carolina contest, the Bush slogan of "compassionate conservatism" was supplemented by the catch-cry of "a reformer with results".
Governor Bush supported his reformist credentials with references to his record in Texas: "I stand before you as a governor who led my state to managed [health] care reform. Some people in Washington say we can't get anything done because of all the lobbyists and special interests. That's somebody who doesn't understand how to lead."
Exit polls revealed that 61% of South Carolina voters said Bush was the real reformer, an attribute which McCain had staked much of his campaign on in New Hampshire. A similar proportion believed that Bush was more likely to beat the eventual Democrat nominee than McCain. Two-thirds also said that Bush ran a positive campaign, while half believed that McCain ran a negative campaign. McCain had abandoned his New Hampshire approach of no negatives and had hit Bush with three negative TV ads in South Carolina: one criticising Bush's tax plan and two comparing Bush's trustworthiness to Clinton's.
Bush repaired many of the flaws which had been evident in his previous campaign in New Hampshire. His wooden over-scripted speeches were replaced with more spontaneous behaviour. One reason for McCain's media appeal in New Hampshire was that he had been accessible to voters at town hall meetings, and unusually accessible to journalists, many of whom travelled all day with him on his campaign buses. Bush responded by mounting a series of town hall meetings in South Carolina, where citizens and journalists were able to quiz him relentlessly in lengthy question sessions. He rounded up his campaign with public rallies.
The Bush organisation's recovery was also assisted by its massive spending in South Carolina. It has been estimated that Bush had spent $50 million by the end of January, out of his total fundraising haul of $70 million. Between New Hampshire and South Carolina, around $3 million a week was spent. According to Don Evans, the Finance Chairman of Bush's campaign, from the beginning there were two Bush budget plans: one contingent on an early primary victory; another adapted to a tight race. Bush was now fighting on plan B. Polls indicated that 30% of voters were personally contacted by the Bush campaign, whereas only 20% were reached by McCain's organisation. Contact was achieved through several devices, including phone calls by volunteers, pre-recorded phone calls from Bush and targeted mailouts (with endorsements).
In South Carolina, the Bush campaign put aside their reticence to attack a fellow party member. Any long-serving legislator like Senator McCain has numerous flaws in their voting record which can be exposed. McCain found himself under criticism for switching his views on trigger locks for guns - voting against them in Congress, campaigning for them in 2000. Public financing of elections is a proposition which McCain voted for in Congress, yet now opposed on the hustings. McCain's rebuttal was that many of these issues were attached to bills which contained other measures also.
Bush's new found combativeness had its flip side. Critics pointed to his performance in a television debate on the "Larry King Live" show, where Bush began to behave with a grumpiness reminiscent of Bob Dole. As others sought to interrupt him, Bush seemed close to losing his temper, complaining "Let me finish."
The more competitive tactics of Bush also included an attempt to claim the mantle of a "campaign finance reformer". One of McCain's most popular policies was his proposal to restrict the scope for interest groups to make secret donations to politicians. Many Americans fear that secretive "soft money" donations result in improper influence on legislation and public policies. Bush's proposal was to ban "soft money" from unions and large corporations. Initially McCain welcomed the announcement, claiming credit for providing the leadership on this issue. But soon he was attacking the Bush proposal because it left a loophole for large donations by individuals.
McCain Campaign
McCain's Presidential bid was boosted by an endorsement from former rival Gary Bauer, a Christian Conservative who pulled out of the Republican primary after polling badly in New Hampshire. Before his withdrawal from the race, Bauer had said that he would not endorse any other candidate unless they moved closer to his conservative stance on abortion, the family, and trade with China. Although Bauer does not carry a large segment of votes with him, his endorsement provides a riposte to the argument that McCain cannot be trusted by conservatives. On the other hand, the endorsement could hamper McCain's appeals to Democrat and independent voters.
Bauer also helped reinforce another McCain message, arguing that McCain "is the best shot we have to end the era of Bill and Hillary." This message was also supported by a Gallup poll conducted over 4-6 February, which predicted that McCain would score 58% nationally, against 36% to Gore. By comparison, Bush polled 53% to Gore's 44% in a hypothetical matchup. McCain also scored the highest "favourable" rating among all candidates - at 76%.
Most importantly, McCain's win in New Hampshire made party leaders take him seriously. Former Washington Governor Don Evans also switched sides, endorsing McCain. Leading conservative commentator William Kristol wrote that the two most recent Republican electoral victories had all grown out of "intra-party insurrections." Kristol reasoned that insurrections expand the voter base of the party, by creating new alliances. For instance:
1) Ronald Reagan's 1980 victory followed a long fight against the wealthy party establishment which was then based in the East coast and stubbornly attached to "liberal" thinking. In 1976 Reagan upset the establishment by running in the primary against a sitting Republican President - Gerald Ford. When Reagan narrowly lost in 1976, pundits thought his political career was ended, but in 1980 he made an almighty comeback. Kristol argues "Reagan appealed to the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt and brought in the Reagan Democrats, along with intellectuals like Jeane Fitzpatrick and Bill Bennett who had been Democrats all their lives."
2) The second such scenario involved Newt Gingrich's 1994 capture of Congress, which had been born out of his revolt against the tax-and-spend budget deal of President George Bush senior. In 1994, Gingrich's campaign pulled in 8 million Americans who had never voted Republican in the House before.
Conversely, argued Kristol, the Republican campaigns in 1992 and 1996 were weak precisely because there was no effort by the party establishment to create new alliances. He argues that McCain has achieved a third insurrection by crushing the party leaders in New Hampshire.
Kristol's general theory has some logic, but the South Carolina result suggests that McCain is not necessarily destined to be a third white knight. One flawed element in Kristol's argument is, that it does not account for the function of ideology.
Both the Reagan and Gingrich revolts were both born out of an ideological conservative movement arising from the grass-roots level, involving numerous activist groups such as student groups and church communities. However McCain's appeal has only been based on the novelty of his character. McCain also lacks a grass-roots network, let alone a coherent campaign organisation in all states. Kristol argues that McCain's appeal to "patriotism" may fill the void of ideology in his campaign. McCain was, after all, an early champion of American leadership in Kosovo. However there is no obvious current international crisis which gives continuing resonance to McCain's call for patriotism.
Kristol argues unsatisfactorily that the existing "establishment" in 2000 is a composite of the left and right factions that were once rivals: "In their weakness they now cling warily to each other." It seems improbable that many Republican conservatives or liberals would confess to this relationship. Any truce during the 2000 campaign to oust the Democrats from the White House will probably dissolve after that contest is concluded.
If McCain has a distinct policy message, it is probably based around his calls for finance reform, rather than his patriotism. Pollsters have not yet identified a clear demographic swing group which back McCain's pitch. Reagan reached out to Southern and Western conservative Democrats, with his criticisms of the impost and excesses of big government. But McCain's appeal is to a loose and eclectic coalition, including those who ideologically oppose corporate welfare, through to those who are disinterested and dissillusioned with politics itself. "I'm fighting against the iron triangle" said McCain, referring to interest group lobbyists, political donations and legislation.
Keyes Campaign
In 1996, the Republican organisers of the main South Carolina debate decided to limit the stage to the main candidates, shutting out Ambassador Alan Keyes. Keyes reacted with public attacks on the organisers, accusing them of "racism" and protesting with a hunger strike. Then in Atlanta, he was arrested while seeking entry into another party debate. But in 2000, organisers relented to his tireless pestering. Keyes seized the opportunity and played a statesman-like role alongside his squabbling opponents.
A poll of television viewers found that 40% said Keyes performed best in the debate, with 34% saying Bush did best and just 19% saying McCain did best. Despite this, when it came to the ballot box, Keyes reaped only 4% of votes cast.
Bradley v Gore
While public attention focussed on the Republican primary, Senators Gore and Bradley were still engaged in a bitter Democrat primary.
Bradley continued to position himself further to the left of Gore. On gay issues, he criticised the Clinton policy of "don't ask, don't tell in the military." Bradley also proposed to illegalise discrimination on the basis of sexuality under the Civil Rights Act and he advocated adoption rights for gay couples. On gun control, Bradley said "His response to my proposal to register and licence all handguns was 'It's impractical. It's too hard to do.' Well I guess that's what leadership is."
But Bradley also seemed to set himself a test, hinting that he might withdraw if his campaign had not won any states by mid March: "I clearly have to win a number of states on March 7 and 14, no question about that."
Watch this space ...