There was an article at the Huffington Post, which can’t be posted on Freerepublic but there were some juicy excerpts:
For a lawmaker who has long raised the ire of some rank-and-file conservatives with his deal-brokering and occasional breeches from Republican orthodoxy, there is a benefit to splitting the Tea Party vote into as many parts as possible.
But this line of reasoning has a potential flaw: South Carolina electoral law stipulates that a candidate must win at least 50 percent of the primary vote to avoid a runoff, and Graham’s chances of reaching that threshold could become even more difficult with additional names on the ballot.
And in a one-on-one runoff , all bets are off for Graham, who would likely have to fight tooth and nail for his political survival.
Former South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson — who runs a super PAC supporting the already well-funded incumbent — explained in stark terms the challenge ahead: “Fifty percent in a three- or four-person race is a hard number to get to. It just is. My expectation would be a runoff.”
“What leads to heartache in Republican primaries is small turnout, which makes it dicey,” he said.
To understand just how dicey things can get for Republicans branded with the “establishment” label these days, one need only look back to Ted Cruz’s once unlikely election to the Senate last year in Texas.
When incumbent Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson decided to retire rather than seek a fourth term, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was pegged as the clear favorite to succeed her. And in the crowded primary in which six Republican candidates earned at least 1 percent of the vote, Dewhurst bested Cruz by a hefty 11-point margin (45 percent to 34 percent).
But in their runoff two months later, the Tea Party-backed Cruz easily defeated his opponent (57 percent to 43 percent) to win the nomination on the way to a general election victory in the deep-red state.
It’s a playbook that many hard-right South Carolina Republicans are increasingly confident can be replicated to unseat Graham.
“I think that Lindsey Graham is vulnerable,” said state Sen. Tom Davis, a top figure in the South Carolina GOP’s libertarian wing. “The energy in the Republican Party is moving in a direction opposite from where people like Lindsey and John McCain and some of the more establishment Republicans stand.”
Polling in the still-developing primary race has been scant, but a Winthrop survey showed that Graham’s approval rating among South Carolina Republicans had dipped from 71.6 percent in February to 57.5 percent in April.
Thanks. Good stuff.