Posted on 05/26/2015 6:17:05 AM PDT by don-o
Photos of South Carolina's most celebrated Republicans crowd every available inch of First Tuesday Strategies' suite—framed on desks, stacked on countertops, pinned to corkboards along the wall. Here, in the offices of the state's premier political firm, the operatives and fundraisers who run the GOP circuit display their allegiances to Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, and Jim DeMint. But there's one man featured more prominently than anyone else: Marco Rubio.
The freshman senator's face is printed on buttons, direct-mail flyers, promotional brochures, dinner programs. He's not from South Carolina. He has never won a race in South Carolina. But the people in this office—and their political allies around the state—aim to change that.
In the six years since launching his Florida Senate campaign, Rubio has become an adopted prince of South Carolina's political royalty. And not by chance. Rubio, whose national ambitions became apparent even before he was sworn into the Senate, quickly identified South Carolina as the home base for his eventual presidential effort, seeing this early-primary state as a more natural fit—culturally, ideologically, geographically—than either Iowa or New Hampshire. He has acted accordingly in the years since—snatching up the state's top talent for his political operation, cultivating personal relationships with influential people on the ground, and making repeated trips to keep tabs on his burgeoning circuit of supporters in the state.
As a result, Rubio has quietly achieved something in South Carolina that no Republican candidate can claim in Iowa or New Hampshire: an organizational lock on one of the most important states en route to the GOP nomination.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
TRUE STORY: I’m watching this debate at my home in Raleigh. It’s the Monday debate in SC, with another one on Thursday and a Saturday primary.
The Super PAC I’m consulting is all down in the dumps after leading Iowa, then slumping late, and then a poor New Hampshire. I’m telling them not to worry, that SC loves to reverse what Iowa and especially NH do.
They don’t believe it.
Then Newt takes down Juan in the Monday debate per the video. I text all of the others and say “we’re back in the game guys” - and we were. Then Newt wrapped up the state in the Thursday debate.
Thanks for the flashback. It was one of the finer political moments I’ve witnessed in any debate.
Juan’s intellect just made mincemeat of Newt which is why Gingrich won the primary. (We ain’t as smart as Juan down here, eh?)
What about Lindsey Graham’s entry? I view it as either a ploy to win SC or to keep someone else from winning that state.
He has about as much appeal as a rerun of Mitt Romney.
here is another for Cruz.
That makes two of us
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