Daily Santorum: 5/9/11
"They say half of life is just showing up," Rick Santorum said to open his keynote speech Friday night before the South Carolina Republican political class at the GOP Silver Elephant Dinner. "So I'm just sorta glad I showed up tonight to be here to talk to you."
The event was supposed to be a candidates' forum, but after just five second-tier candidates showed up in Greenville Thursday night, the Columbia event was a one-man show for Santorum. He showed up again Saturday morning to shake hands and was rewarded for his attendance with a resounding victory in the straw poll: Santorum finished with 37 percent of the vote, well ahead of second-place Mitt Romney at 15 percent.
In a statement following his victory, Santorum again hinted at the non-attendance of his foes: "The voters of South Carolina want a candidate who will work hard for the nomination and who respects the state's role as the First-in-the-South primary. I look forward to returning to the Palmetto State soon."
What does this mean? The state's political class is pissed and wanting to send a message that if you want to win South Carolina, you need to actually go to South Carolina. As I wrote in my Sunday piece on Rick's tireless S.C. campaign, he started working the state in late 2009 and 2010 with candidate endorsements and the like:
None of the candidates he campaigned for in South Carolina has offered a formal endorsement, but the former senator bought plenty of goodwill with his time and money. ...
In addition to his frequent jaunts through South Carolina, Mr. Santorum has focused as much or more attention on Iowa and New Hampshire -- but his potential rivals are frequent visitors to those states as well. Mr. Santorum's work in South Carolina so far puts him in a smaller crowd. Republican politicians and activists cited visits and conversations with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann -- and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, before he decided not to run -- but the state has been mostly an afterthought so far for top potential contenders.
But South Carolina is also known for picking establishment candidates, and has correctly picked the GOP nominee every time since 1980. Aside from wanting someone who can hit the right social conservative notes, South Carolina Republicans want someone electable. They are showing the love to Santorum now because he's there.
He won't have the state virtually to himself for long. Over the weekend the national media were much more interested in the movements of former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, who wooed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Friday and then delivered a commencement speech to the University of South Carolina on Saturday.
The Schedule: Nothing on the docket for this week yet.