Earlier today, The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber penned an interesting piece about the one coalescent factor between the Democrats’ Barack Obama v. Hillary Clinton presidential match up, and the Republicans’ face-off between Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Granted, there are all sorts of differences between the McCain-Romney race and Obama-Hillary. Among other things, Obama is a much better speaker, but also much less experienced, than McCain, while Hillary doesn’t have to deal with the “phony” label Romney’s acquired. Also, Republican voters tend to look for different qualities in a president than Democratic voters do. Still, on some level, the Democratic race offers a similar choice: a candidate running a less tangible, more thematic campaign, and a wonkier candidate trying to appeal to voters with a specific laundry-list and an argument about competence. [NOAM SCHEIBER - TNR]

When I read that, it really hit me how many different aspects there are to these primary campaigns, and with South Carolina likely to be the king-maker for both parties, I will be fascinated to see how this plays out.  It will be especially interesting if the Democrats go one way and the Republicans go another way.

I think it could offer a great deal of insight into how this state breaks down for campaign strategists and political science professors alike.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Democrats, Primary Season, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.