If you’re looking for the most conservative region in America, upcountry South Carolina would be a strong contender. Greenville, the area’s biggest city, is home base to Senator Jim DeMint, who argues that unmarried women who live with their boyfriends shouldn’t be allowed to teach in public schools. Though John McCain won the 2008 South Carolina primary, this part of the state went to Mike Huckabee, moral crusader and Southern Baptist pastor. The drive from Greenville to the hamlet of Greer takes you past Bob Jones University, a school that banned interracial dating until the twenty-first century.
The political milieu is evident this sticky July evening at Mutt’s BBQ, where around 100 conservative activists and assorted curiosity seekers have come for a gander at Jon Huntsman. Before tonight’s event starts, they join in a religious invocation, the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, and an anti-statist poem known as the Republican Creed. Henry McMaster, the state’s silver-haired former attorney general, then makes the political tenor of the room explicit when he rises to introduce Jon Huntsman in his thick-as-gravy drawl. “Some of you folks may remembah that I made a pledge that I looked forward to the day Democrats in South Carolina were so rare we’d have to start huntin’ em with dawgs,” McMaster intones. “It’s come true! You cay-ant find any!”
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