Politics & Government

How Serious is the Divide in the SCGOP?

Tea Party and SCGOP at odds again.

The rift that blew open the Republican Party nationally appears to have made its way to South Carolina.

Since its inception in 2009, and its demand for more conservative representation, the Tea Party has had an uneasy relationship with the Republican Party.

The two have generally managed to co-exist, especially after a wave of Tea Party-backed candidates enabled Republicans to take back the House of Representatives in 2010. But in the wake of Barack Obama’s re-election and the loss of numerous other winnable races, the Republican Party is in the midst of a well-publicized rethink.

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In South Carolina, the GOP needed no such head-scratching. From an electoral standpoint, the party is as strong as ever in the Palmetto State.

That stability could be threatened, however.

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Earlier this month, the Karl Rove-led American Crossroads Super-PAC, created the Conservative Victory Project, a new effort designed to prevent nominating the “wrong candidates.” In announcing the project, Rove all but blamed the Tea Party for the problem, which in turn set off a battle across conservative websites and blogs.

That battle has now arrived in South Carolina.

Harry Kibler, publisher of RinoHunt.net and one of the leaders of the Tea Party in South Carolina, sent out an email to supporters last week accusing the SCGOP of holding a secret meeting “to block Tea Party minded people from upcoming GOP precinct reorganization efforts.”

Read the full email here.

When contacted about the accusation, Alex Stroman, Executive Director of the SCGOP said, “There was no SCGOP meeting. Period.”

“I’m not sure where these conspiracy theories come from. Maybe people have been watching too many episodes of '24', but there is no secret plan,” Stroman said.

Stroman explained that precinct reorganizations happen every two years and the state party is in the process of planning for those.

One of the key points of dissension between the Tea Party and the SCGOP is the nominating procedure for candidates. The SCGOP, like most other state parties, nominates candidates through primaries. But the Tea Party claims that the primary procedure, which allows anyone to vote, often results in the least conservative candidate being chosen.

The Tea Party would prefer to nominate candidates by convention. For example, the nominee for governor would be selected at a convention of delegates and party leaders. The idea being that such people are both more conservative and more attuned to the important issues.

Tension between the Tea Party and the SCGOP sprouted up last year when hundreds of candidates, many of them aligned with the Tea Party, were thrown off ballots.

And doubt has festered among the Tea Party about the SCGOP’s commitment to conservatism.

That’s a notion that Stroman resists. “The SCGOP exists to represent the entire Republican Party. That covers a lot of different types of Republicans,” Stroman said.

Stroman disagreed with the notion that someone must be a 100 percent believer in all things conservative in order to call himself a Republican. “That’s why we’re the ‘Big Tent’ party,” Stroman said.

He also disputed the notion that SCGOP leadership is taking cues from Rove, referring to party Chairman Chad Connelly’s recent statement to Business Insider.

“I don't think challenging conservatives is the best idea,” Connelly told the publication. “I think it's got to come from the people." 

Another source of friction has been over the recent “Nullification” fight to overturn ObamaCare. There is a belief among the Tea Party that the SCGOP has not been supportive enough in the effort. Some Republicans have expressed concern about using the term “nullification” because it evokes John Calhoun and the pre-Civil War South.

Stroman noted that he spoke at a recent rally against ObamaCare and added, “The important thing is to ultimately get rid of ObamaCare rather than worry about the language we used to accomplish it.”

Stroman is confident that fences can ultimately be mended within the SCGOP, but that does not mean he’s not exasperated by the schism.

“These misinformation campaigns are getting kind of old. They need to stop. We need to remind each other of all the values we share rather than where we occasionally disagree.”

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