Stakes high for candidates in South Carolina

Ronald Reagan’s influence could be observed in both parties’ campaigns.

COMBINED DISPATCHES

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The first voice of presidential preference from the South will be heard today, and whatever voters in South Carolina’s Republican priºmary say, most of them will have Ronald Reagan in mind when they select among the hybrid conservative candidates claiming to be the rightful heir of the Reagan legacy.

The absence of a Reagan-like consensus candidate is one reason why there have been three separate winners in the three major primary and caucus contests this month. And the outcome in culturally conservative and military-minded South Carolina could say a lot about where the solid Republican South is headed in this uncharacteristically jumbled early primary season.

On the eve of today’s vote, polls showed a tight competition between Sen. John McCain, the former Vietnam War POW who won in New Hampshire, and ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the upstart who rode a blend of populism and evangelism to victory in Iowa.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Michigan winner who invested heavily in South Carolina starting in 2006, effectively gave up Thursday and took his campaign to Nevada, which is holding caucuses today.

And Fred Thompson, the actor and ex-U.S. senator from Tennessee, has yet to justify the advance billing that suggested he is the second coming of Reagan.

“I think it’s really irrelevant,” argued Oran Smith, executive director and president of the Palmetto Family Council, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes family issues. “No one is going to be able to capture the Reagan magic. It was a one-time thing.”

But that does not deter the candidates, who differ little on the major issues, from invoking Reagan’s name — and even his favorite mannerisms — at campaign stops. Romney, who speaks with almost impeccable diction, makes a point of saying “gubment” instead of government.

Meanwhile, the three leading Democratic contenders had some of their sharpest exchanges of the campaign Friday as they made their final pitches before their party’s caucuses today. Nevada is playing a prominent early role in the party’s nomination process for the first time.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois suggested in Reno that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, would be “a president whose plans change with the politics of the moment,” according to the Associated Press.

Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards jumped on Obama, who was quoted telling the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board that Reagan “changed the trajectory of America in a way that Bill Clinton did not” and that the GOP had been the “party of ideas” for the past 15 years, AP reported.

“That’s not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years,” Hillary Clinton said in Las Vegas, adding that the GOP had driven the nation into debt and proposed privatizing Social Security, among other ideas she considers bad.

“Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party,” Edwards said in Las Vegas. He called the late president “the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans.”

GOP candidates chose to concentrate on the Michigan and South Carolina primaries, while Democrats have had nearly two weeks to focus on Nevada, the only contest between New Hampshire on Jan. 8 and their Jan. 26 primary in South Carolina.