South Carolina isn’t Bush Country anymore

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/16/south-carolina-isnt-bush-country-anymore/

“He’s hijacked my party,” Jeb Bush said of Donald Trump on Tuesday on CBS's "This Morning." “Someone has to take a stand.”

Bush has deputized himself to take that stand in South Carolina, which will hold its Republican presidential primary Saturday and which is regularly referred to by his supporters as "Bush country." He has brought his mother and brother, the former president, into the state to help with this job -- believing that South Carolina's Republican Party will return logic back to the nominating process.

I wouldn't bet on it.

The truth of the matter is that the South Carolina that handed George W. Bush the comeback win he so badly needed in 2000 doesn't really exist anymore. This state and its Republican Party, which was once dominated by its Republican establishment, from Carroll Campbell to Strom Thurmond, has changed significantly over the past decade and a half -- a transformation affirmed by the large (and steady) lead that Donald Trump holds in primary polling ahead of Saturday's vote.

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[mercuryblues]

1. I could have

saved Chris Cillizza a lot of time with that article. Bush is losing in South Carolina because he is not racist and bigoted enough.

From that public policy poll:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/02/trump-clinton-still-have-big-sc-leads.html


-70% think the Confederate flag should still be flying over the State Capital, to only 20% who agree with it being taken down. In fact 38% of Trump voters say they wish the South had won the Civil War to only 24% glad the North won and 38% who aren't sure. Overall just 36% of Republican primary voters in the state are glad the North emerged victorious to 30% for the South, but Trump's the only one whose supporters actually wish the South had won.


-By an 80/9 spread, Trump voters support his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. In fact 31% would support a ban on homosexuals entering the United States as well, something no more than 17% of anyone else's voters think is a good idea. There's also 62/23 support among Trump voters for creating a national database of Muslims and 40/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else's voters back. Only 44% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should even be legal at all in the United States, to 33% who think it should be illegal. To put all the views toward Muslims in context though, 32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one, compared to only 33% who oppose it and 35% who have no opinion one way or another.