The New Republic

Shortly before a Republican presidential primary debate in Columbia,
South Carolina, this last May, several conservative activists in the
state received mysterious envelopes in the mail. The letters
arrived anonymously, each one containing an eight-page document, a
typewritten manifesto with a pseudo-academic title: "Mormons in
Contemporary American Society: A Politically Dangerous Religion?"
The letters depicted Mormonism as based on "hoaxes" and ridiculed
the church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a "gold digger turned
prophet. " The mailing also provocatively dubbed Smith "the
Mohammed of the West." "Like the prophet of Islam," it said, "Smith
founded his religion upon prophecies and revelations which
commanded him to become a polygamist and warlord. Many centuries
apart, these two men became the focal point of large religions that
blurred the lines between religion, war, domestic life and
politics." The letters also suggested that Mormons take direct
orders from church leaders. They didn't have to name him to make it
clear whom they were targeting: Republican presidential
candidate--and devout Mormon--Mitt Romney.This being South Carolina, the Romney camp assumed a rival campaign
had sent the letter. After all, this wasn't the first subterranean
attack on their candidate. Just before a March GOP straw poll in
Spartanburg, someone using the e-mail address
upstaterepublican@gmail.com mass-mailed a missive titled, "Mitt
Romney has a family secret he doesn't want you to know." "Those dark
suspicions you hide deep inside yourself about Mormonism are trying
to tell you something, " it read. "Trust your instincts! ... The
light of truth will burn through the smoke and mirrors of Mitt
Romney's movie star looks and crafty words!" The e- mails arrived
around the same time as another anonymous letter, a six-page
diatribe titled "Mitt Romney: Say anything to get elected," which
ripped the former Massachusetts governor for his positions on
abortion, gun control, and "conservative values."

Romney is hardly the innocent victim, though. In September, just as
Fred Thompson was preparing to enter the Republican presidential
field, PhoneyFred. org appeared. The website was equal parts
sophomoric parody and character assassination. Its home page
featured an absurd image of Thompson in a period costume with a
frilly scarf and gilded jacket (presumably from an acting role).
Another photograph featured a grinning shot of the Tennessean
surrounded, via Photoshop, by several women to whom he's been
romantically linked. The site directed viewers to dirt on Thompson
via links with such titles as hollywood fred, washington fred,
trial lawyer fred, moron fred, and playboy fred. "[W]e figured it
was about time that we did a little research into what Fred
Thompson (not Arthur Branch) really stands for," explained a
welcome message on the site, referring to the character Thompson
plays on "Law & Order." But The Washington Post did a little
research, too, and traced the site to the consulting firm of Warren
Tompkins, perhaps the top political operative in South Carolina--and
a consultant to the Romney campaign.

While the Republican field remains focused on Iowa and New
Hampshire, South Carolina has already developed into the sleaziest
leg of the presidential race. That comes as no surprise. The
Palmetto State has long practiced an unusually grubby brand of
politics. Many presidential candidates would probably skip it
altogether if they could. ("They play with live ammo down there!"
squawks one campaign aide.) But South Carolina is far too important
for that: Not since 1976 has a Republican candidate been nominated
without winning the state's contest, the third of the primary
season. (This year, Michigan may vote earlier, and Nevada caucuses
on the same day--but it's South Carolina the GOP candidates are
most focused on.)

As the 2008 Republicans trudge toward this political Mordor, they do
so bracing for what threaten to be new lows of attack politics.
John McCain's reputation was slandered (and his candidacy ruined)
here in 2000--and he was a war hero. By contrast, the current
leaders of the GOP field--Romney, Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani--seem
almost tailor-made for the state's smear machine. Romney's
opponents are salivating over his Mormonism. Giuliani's marital
history, gay friends, and past appearances in drag are all ideal
fodder for dead-of-night windshield pamphlets. And one upstate
county Republican chairman has already sneered publicly at
Thompson's "trophy wife." "It's gonna be brutal, " chuckles state
Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler. For the 2008 Republicans, then,
winning South Carolina may be less a matter of pulling off a clear
victory than simply getting out alive.

Eight years ago, George W. Bush's supporters, apparently backed by
the state's GOP establishment, dragged John McCain's name through
the South Carolina mud. Church fliers declared him "the fag
candidate." A fringe veterans' group denounced him as a traitor.
Anonymous "push-poll" phone calls told voters that he had an
illegitimate black child. One Bob Jones University professor even
sent a mass e-mail falsely stating that McCain had "chosen to sire
children without marriage." Challenged on CNN, the professor
responded, "Can you prove that there aren't any?" (Who says BJU
isn't academically rigorous?)

So, in 2008, McCain's plan in South Carolina was to be the
establishment candidate, the aggressor not the victim. One sign was
his decision to re-hire his savvy local political consultant from
2000, Richard Quinn, whose editorship of the Southern Partisan
Quarterly Review, which extols Confederate leaders and has played
down the brutality of the slave trade, had caused McCain p.r.
headaches. He also scored early endorsements from state GOP honchos,
like Senator Lindsey Graham, Attorney General Henry McMaster, and a
majority of Republicans in the legislature. By early this year,
McCain seemed well on his way to building a South Carolina Death
Star.

But, after McCain's national campaign went broke this summer, he had
to scrap much of his South Carolina team. Now it's Mitt Romney who
is building a political juggernaut. Last year, Romney hired
Tompkins, who was Bush's chief strategist in the 2000 primary. He's
also snapped up several experienced field operatives fresh from the
state GOP's "2006 Victory" team. And he recently landed the
endorsement of Bob Jones III, chancellor of the Greenville-based
Christian university that bears his name--a jackpot for a Mormon
trying to insulate himself from doubts among evangelical voters.

Still, the race remains a muddle. Romney has lagged in the polls
behind front-runners Fred Thompson, who seems to be benefiting from
his Southern roots, and Rudy Giuliani, whose star power and
"toughness" obscure a weak ground team.

Of course, those numbers can and probably will change--not least as
voters wrestle with Giuliani's fundamental moderation on social
concerns, like gun control and gay rights. (At one event in early
October, Rudy even suggested that the Lewinsky scandal had been
overblown.) "It's only a matter of time before Romney or a 527
starts blasting Rudy on those issues down here," says Greenville
Republican strategist Jay W. Ragley, who is not aligned with any
candidate. Should those attacks succeed, Republican voters in later
primary states on whom Giuliani is counting might conclude that
he's damaged goods, unable to rally Republicans in a general
election.

It is Rudy's terrible luck that South Carolina comes so early in the
GOP primary schedule. And, ironically enough, that itself is
something of a dirty trick, one devised by Lee Atwater. Atwater
was, of course, the mastermind of the 1988 attack campaign against
Michael Dukakis, starring furloughed-felon- turned-rapist Willie
Horton, as well as of great prior campaign stunts like saying a
rival candidate who'd been treated for depression was "hooked up to
jumper cables" and mailing voters a questionnaire asking them to
reflect on another candidate's Jewishness. (Atwater denied the
latter.)

In 1980, a young Atwater, who once showed up at a college party with
a slaughtered pig's head on a stake, was backing Ronald Reagan's
presidential campaign when he proposed to vault Reagan to
front-runner status by engineering a prominent win for him in
Atwater's home state. The plan worked, and South Carolina never
gave up its newfound political influence. Since then, it has become
a place where the political establishment props up its stumbling
favorites, as it did for George H.W. Bush in both 1988 and 1992. In
1996, after Pat Buchanan defeated Bob Dole in New Hampshire, local
leaders ordered evangelicals, who in their hearts preferred the
populist insurgent, to side with Dole instead, sending him back on
his way to his nomination. And, after McCain stunned George W. Bush
in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, the Bush presidency looked like
a lost dream until McCain's trip through the state's meat grinder.
The pattern grew so familiar that, last January, one local GOP
consultant told The Washington Post that South Carolina often has to
"clean up the mess we inherit from the earlier states."

But 2008 could tell a different story. The GOP establishment that
long ran the state has faded, thanks in part to the deaths of
Senator Strom Thurmond and former governor Carroll Campbell. "It's
a new frontier," says Jim Corbett, state director for Sam
Brownback's short-lived presidential bid. "It's wide open. The
establishment--experienced, politically involved people--are spread
out among the candidates." Instead of an epic two-front war, then,
next year South Carolina promises to be a bloody circular firing
squad.

Of all the Republican candidates, Romney may have the most to fear
from a vicious South Carolina primary. An effective smear campaign
about his Mormonism could ruin him with the state's critical
evangelical voting bloc. Rudy Giuliani may have worn a dress and
Fred Thompson might have a "trophy wife," the thinking would go,
but at least they worship the right god. Romney, however, may have
insulated himself by hiring Warren Tompkins to run his campaign.

The dirty work of South Carolina politics is conducted by a small
crew of operatives who studied at Atwater's elbow. "All of us in
this state directly or indirectly trained under him," says Rod
Shealy, a veteran GOP consultant not aligned with any campaign.
Atwater instilled in his followers a sense of politics as a game
with no rules--one in which treachery was a virtue and not a vice.
"People here wear dirty tricks like a badge of honor," says Ragley.
They are an irascible lot, often rumpled and wearing garb like
Hawaiian shirts and safari hats. "They're really unkempt and
eccentric--not like Charleston white boys in boat shoes and bow
ties," says one local Democrat. South Carolina operatives tend to
congregate in joints with names like the Lizard's Thicket and the
Back Porch (co-owned by the son of McCain's consultant Richard
Quinn, in fact). Many also have sketchy histories. Shealy himself
was once convicted of violating campaign laws after he convinced a
black man facing felony charges to join a statewide campaign; the
plan was to drive up white voter turnout in favor of Shealy's
sister, who was a candidate. Quinn has his association with
Southern Partisan. And, to some, the recent anonymous e-mails about
Romney recalled a 2002 incident involving Quinn's employee, Trey
Walker, John McCain's state campaign manager, who was caught
sending an unflattering article about a local candidate from an
e-mail address meant to seem like it belonged to Shealy. So goes
the internecine world of South Carolina politics.

But, even among this motley crew, Warren Tompkins stands out: "The
God of Hell" is how one fellow operative describes him. Tompkins
grew up with Atwater, and he is said to most closely emulate his
late friend's political style. "Warren is Lee Atwater in a business
suit," says University of South Carolina professor Blease Graham,
contrasting Atwater's slovenliness with the smooth business
demeanor of Tompkins, who has enriched himself in recent years as a
corporate lobbyist. Everyone in South Carolina assumes it was
Tompkins who stage-managed the savaging of John McCain in 2000,
even if he was taking cues from Karl Rove. "I think the mastermind
resided someplace else, but I think [Tompkins] was the instrument
of it," says former McCain adviser John Weaver. Hence, few people
were surprised to learn that the PhoneyFred website was traced back
to Tompkins's firm. (Tompkins said a subordinate acted on his own.)

Even with Tompkins as his secret weapon, however, Romney is hardly
in the clear. The day after he was endorsed by Bob Jones III, The
Greenville News printed an e-mail comment from a "self-described
rank-and-file conservative" named Wayne Owens, who declared, "As
Christians we should not endorse a cult member as our president."
When I read this quote to a Republican with presidential campaign
experience in the state, he cackled and declared, "That was
probably sent by Rudy Giuliani's county chairman!"

He was joking. But, by South Carolina standards, a bogus e-mail to a
reporter would hardly be shocking. Indeed, it may be the new
business as usual. As Shealy notes, "The anonymity of the Internet
is going to take the whole game to a new and much lower level than
thought possible." Last April, one anonymous blog--"McCain SC," the
"Unofficial Home for Palmetto State McCainiacs"--hawked a New York
tabloid story alleging that Giuliani's wife Judith was "involved in
a program that killed innocent puppies" to test medical products. It
sounds like the McCain team may have learned its lesson back in
2000, and now knows the secret to victory: When in South Carolina,
do as the South Carolinians do.

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