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South Carolina Primary Day
Saturday, February 19, 2000
From: Greenville, South Carolina
Aboard the Bush Press bus and plane.
More on the plane. The press boards the Miami Air 727 from the rear door which I amusingly called the D.B. Cooper-Newt Gingrich entrance. At 7:15 in the morning, yesterday, there were very few reporters who found anything amusing.
At a rally at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, Congressman Jim DeMith, introduced Congressman J.C. Watts as follows: "J.C. Watts has changed the complexion of the whole Republican Party." Every reporter found THAT amusing.
Presbyterian College's nickname is the "Blue Hose." According to students around a pool table after the rally, "Blue Hose" are the color of the stockings worn by the highest ranking officials of the Scottish Army. Living in Your Nation's Capital where the nickname of Georgetown University teams is "The Hoyas," the Blue Hose did not seem so odd.
The Blue Hose of Presbyterian is only the second best college nickname in the state. The best - maybe in all the world - is, of course, the Purple Paladins of Furman University.
At Emory University, there was a sign on the door of a classroom informing the students of EDC762 that their class was not meeting in Daniel Hall. The title of the class is: The American College Student. So, at Emory University a college student can take a course in BEING a college student while a college student. All while the old man foots the bill. Is this a great country or what?
When I take over the world here's another rule: No one shall have a cell phone which rings with the tune to: "How Gentle is the Rain."
Polls. Polls. Polls. The startling number in USA Today: Bush 52, McCain 40 was compared and contrasted with the NBC Poll which had Bush ahead by about six and the Zogby poll which had Bush leading by slightly over three.
All day long reporters repeated these numbers to one another as if the sheer act of saying them and hearing them often enough would cause the bus to make a right turn at Delphi and we would be able to divine the future.
The future, in this case, was only about 18 hours away, but as we have discussed before, a large part of the fun of being a big time reporter is to figure out what is going to happen before it happens so when they have to write about what just happened they can say to themselves, "I knew it."
The real polls close tonight at seven. There is no way to know how this is going to come out, but it is likely that the winner here will be the Republican nominee.
Michigan and Arizona come tumbling out of the chute on Tuesday. Virginia and Washington State take place on the 29th. Super Tuesday follows on March 7th.
If there is such a thing as momentum in politics, then whoever picks it up here may well be able to sail before it all the way to the nomination.
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