Bush Defeats McCain in S. Carolina Primary

George W. Bush romped to a decisive victory Saturday in the South Carolina presidential primary, blunting the challenge of John McCain and firmly reestablishing his command of the race for the GOP nomination.

Demonstrating broad and deep appeal in a contest that was pivotal for both candidates, Bush’s win strongly positioned the Texas governor for the string of elections likely to decide the Republican fight over the next three weeks. The next significant test comes Tuesday in Michigan, which votes the same day as McCain’s home state of Arizona.

“Tonight we come roaring out of South Carolina with a new energy in this campaign,” Bush told an exuberant crowd of hundreds gathered in a balloon-filled ballroom of his headquarters hotel in Columbia, S.C.

About 100 miles to the southeast, at his own rally at the convention center in Charleston, a pugnacious McCain vowed to fight on. “My friends, you don’t have to win every skirmish to win a war or a crusade, and although we fell a little short tonight our crusade goes stronger.”

In running up his unexpectedly big win, Bush trounced McCain among Republicans, more than offsetting his rival’s support among independents and Democrats, who were free to cross over in the state’s open primary and did so by the tens of thousands.

Bush’s performance also defied expectations that the bigger the vote the better for McCain--or that the unrelentingly nasty tone of the campaign would depress voter participation.

The record turnout of more than 500,000 was so big that some precinct workers dashed off midday to photocopy extra ballots. Still, with an extra lift from conservative Christian voters, Bush won handily.

With 99% of the state’s precincts reporting, Bush had 53% to McCain’s 42%. Alan Keyes had 5%. McCain telephoned Bush less than 10 minutes after the polls closed to extend his congratulations--but was hardly conciliatory when he rallied supporters with a biting speech a short time later.

The results carried on a recent tradition in Republican presidential politics in which New Hampshire knocks down the front-runner and South Carolina picks him back up.

Bush Savors His Victory

Bush called his win a mandate for his agenda of “better schools and lower taxes and a stronger military” and repeatedly bashed the Clinton-Gore administration, saying it had squandered “America’s strength and purpose in the world.”

Bush said he wants to “usher in the responsibility era in America.” Bush added he would make sure that, “when American parents and their children look at the White House, they will see not an embarrassment, but an example of which they can be proud.”

McCain, for his part, suggested Bush’s campaign was hardly a model of civic virtue. Using some of his harshest language ever, the senator from Arizona vowed to give voters a choice “between my optimistic and welcoming conservatism and the negative message of fear.”

“We are going to win,” McCain went on, in an angry and scolding tone. “I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land. I want the presidency in the best way, not the worst way.”

The South Carolina primary has been a crucial stop for Republicans for the last 20 years. Since the first GOP contest was held in 1980, no Republican has won the nomination without first carrying the state.

But the stakes grew exponentially when McCain clobbered Bush in New Hampshire’s leadoff primary almost three weeks ago. The GOP race was transformed overnight as McCain soared and alarm spread among Republicans who had rushed to embrace Bush, convinced he was a shoo-in for the nomination.

Bush seemed to have laid at least some of those doubts to rest with Saturday’s emphatic win.

“It’s a big victory for Gov. Bush,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP pollster and Southern campaign specialist, who has remained neutral in race. “It allows him to say that he withstood the McCain insurgency, withstood the huge surge of momentum that Sen. McCain had coming out of New Hampshire.”

Michigan Becomes Crucial for McCain

For McCain, the loss was an undeniable setback, Ayres went on, but one he could quickly overcome with a win in Michigan, where polls show the senator ahead. “If he wins in Michigan as well as Arizona, he’s back in the thick of the race. But it will be difficult for him to sustain a loss in Michigan, especially a loss of any magnitude.”

After Tuesday’s contests, Republicans will vote in Virginia, Washington and North Dakota. Then, on March 7, come California, New York and 10 others states with more than half the 1,034 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination.

With his victory Saturday, Bush walks away with 34 of South Carolina’s 37 delegates, with the rest to be allocated later. But far more important, Bush managed to regain his footing after a much tougher struggle than he or his strategists ever anticipated.

Back when his campaign seemed to defy gravity, the high-flying Texan counted on a near-effortless victory in South Carolina. Time and again, the state’s powerful party establishment delivered for the national front-runner, even after he stumbled elsewhere. An opinion poll conducted just before New Hampshire gave Bush a 20-percentage-point edge over McCain. Even after Bush lost, a top South Carolina strategist spoke assuredly of “once again . . . cleaning up New Hampshire’s mess.”

Instead, Bush arrived to face the fight of his life.

Bush responded by working to out-McCain McCain. Gone was the diffident candidate who knocked off early and openly pined for the comforts of the Governor’s Mansion back in Austin. Bush redoubled his schedule, amped-up his stump speech and shucked the trappings of front-runner-hood, stepping down from his lectern to face all comers at unscripted town-hall-style meetings. He even chartered his own campaign bus, the rolling symbol of his rival’s accessible, grass-roots style.

“Bush completely remade himself from the sort of lackadaisical candidate he was, just drifting along before New Hampshire, into a scrappy, crusading right-wing Republican,” said Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at South Carolina’s Francis Marion University. “He just junked his old ‘compassionate conservatism’ and left it by the side of the road.”

With Gusto, Bush Goes After McCain

At the same time he veered sharply right, Bush also went after the independent, reform-minded voters who boosted McCain in New Hampshire, styling himself as an insurgent in his own right--”a reformer with results,” as Bush’s new slogan proclaimed, in a poke at McCain that only hinted at the assault to follow.

In a virtual round-the-clock barrage of radio and television advertising, much of it scathingly negative, Bush portrayed McCain as a hypocrite and the darling of “union bosses and the liberal media,” charges that were echoed by Bush’s supporters within the Christian right and special-interest groups that poured unprecedented sums into their own anti-McCain efforts.

For all his steam heading out of New Hampshire, the Arizona senator had to shift strategies as well. He started out matching Bush’s advertising attacks blow for blow. The nastiest may have been a McCain spot that claimed Bush “twists the truth like Clinton”--about as ugly a charge as one can make in a Republican primary here.

Then, abruptly, McCain yanked his negative TV spots and vowed to wage a positive campaign.

He was sickened by the tone the race was taking, the senator said. But polling also found that McCain’s clean-crusader image was being spattered by the mud he threw Bush’s way--so much so that Saturday’s exit polls showed that voters considered McCain the more negative of the two.

Thigpen, like many, considered the Clinton comparison a major--and costly--blunder. “It wasn’t believable at all on the face of it,” Thigpen said. But even more significant, it backfired on McCain “because he stepped out of the mode of this man who is a person of character and integrity and courage and made him look like just another politician.”

With Bush locking up so much of the core Republican vote, McCain increasingly set his sights on the independents and crossover Democrats eligible to vote in the GOP race. He spoke of winning back those disaffected by the political process and creating “a new Republican Party,” modeled after the one fashioned by his hero and early political mentor, Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed appeal across a broad swath of the electorate.

But the South Carolina campaign was not so much uplifting as enervating, as the candidates sparred day after day over the bitter tenor and disagreed--bitterly--over who was the more responsible.

“Trying to expose your opponent by taking the bark off is pretty much South Carolina politics as usual,” said Blease Graham, a University of South Carolina professor and longtime student of state elections. “The difference was that all this was happening inside the Republican Party.”

The rancor continued Saturday even as ballots were being cast.

Flap Brews Over Polling Places

McCain aides grew livid when they learned that polling places had failed to open in some places where the campaign was counting on crossover support from Democrats and independents. “We’re going to raise hell about it,” said John Weaver, the campaign director. McCain demanded an investigation. “It’s so disappointing to hear this kind of thing. In America, we should allow every person an equal opportunity to vote. It’s sort of fundamental to the process.”

Asked if he blamed the Bush camp for the shutdown, McCain shrugged but said, “I think we all know that I was appealing to Republicans, independents and Democrats.”

J. Sam Daniels, executive director of the state GOP, denied any wrongdoing. Unlike most states, the political parties are responsible in South Carolina for conducting their respective primaries.

Daniels said the polling places were closed because the party couldn’t find workers to staff the polls, despite a court order issued earlier this week, and because volunteers that were recruited failed to show up. “Voters are just inconvenienced a little bit,” Daniels insisted, saying voters who showed up at closed polling places were simply directed to other locations.

Bush, for his part, denied any knowledge of the problem. Speaking at a morning appearance in Spartanburg, Bush suggested that “if [McCain’s] got a problem, call up the chairman of the Republican Party.”

Graham, who taught political science for more than 20 years, said election shenanigans are nothing new here. “I don’t know whether it’s a sin of omission or commission,” he said. “But that sort of stuff happens around the margins.”

Times staff writers Maria L. La Ganga and T. Christian Miller contributed to this story.

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% of Votes in South Carolina

Bush: 53%

McCain: 42%

Keyes: 5%

Other: 0%

*

Delegate Tally to Date

*--*

Iowa* N.H. Del. S.C. Total** Bush: 9 6 12 34 61 McCain: 2 9 0 3 14 Keyes: 4 0 0 0 4 Other: 10 2 0 0 12

*--*

*

99% of Precincts

*Associated Press estimate. Iowa’s 25 delegates are not yet committed.

**1,034 needed to win nomination