Smaller-Government Insurgents May Save The GOP

Republicans may manage to find a way to fail in the most favorable political climate for their party since the New Deal Democratic majority got bounced out on its ration book in 1946.

But the signs for November continue to point to an absolute thrashing for the Democrats and, more surprising, a revitalization of Republicanism.

The dire warning from the rump of the old Republican Party was that insurgent candidates who embrace a purer, more liberty-minded form of conservatism would be a disaster.

The old GOP grandees who have never met an incumbent they didn't like preached disaster, but so far, the small-government rebellion is doing more good than harm.

South Carolina was the first Deep South state to make the switch to the GOP, opting for Richard Nixon in 1968 while Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia went with segregationist George Wallace.

South Carolina's move that year was no less racially motivated, but was at least more forward-looking than Wallace's effort to force the Democratic Party to maintain its 140-year history of supporting state-sponsored racial segregation.

Change is again in the air in South Carolina.

Republicans there have nominated Nikki Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants as their gubernatorial candidate. They have also picked a black state legislator, Tim Scott, for a congressional seat over the son of Strom Thurmond, the 1948 segregationist candidate who later migrated with his state's voters to the Republican Party.

Barring major developments, Scott and Haley, who would join Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as the second Indian American governor, will cruise to victory this fall.

How strange to think that this time next year there may be no non-white Democratic governors -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's re-election bid is still shaky and New York Gov. David Paterson is not running -- and two non-white Republicans leading Deep South states.

In Haley and Scott's victories, race was mostly irrelevant. While Barack Obama's racial identity was a major selling point for Democratic voters, South Carolina Republicans seem to have been embracing conservatism, rather than diversity for its own sake.

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