Instead of tracking where politicians are going to show up and when, one local South Carolina paper—the Charleston Post and Courier—has launched an interactive tool called the "Whisper Campaign" in hopes of tracking the types of political pranks that have routinely tanked campaigns there. Darren Samuelsohn reports:
This is a state famous for telephone pollsters implying John McCain had an illegitimate child and the bogus Mitt Romney Christmas card with controversial quotes from the Book of Mormon. Fliers dropped on South Carolina doorsteps have told people the wrong date to vote; this is where political rivals have bantered openly with racial slurs and innuendos about sexual trysts. [...]
And with a larger and far more diverse electorate than the first two states, there are more people with sensitivities to exploit.
“South Carolina on the Republican side is a viper’s nest,” said Neil Sroka, the head of Barack Obama’s digital team in the state during his 2008 campaign.
And who, oh who, might be ripe for targeting from a whisper campaign? You guessed it—Trump. The guy everyone is gunning for and almost no one has had the guts to go after directly (except for poor ineffectual Jeb).
“No one has talked about the three marriages yet. No one has talked about the casinos. I suspect we’ll see that come Monday,” said Katon Dawson, a longtime GOP operative in South Carolina. “Someone has to take the bark off of him or he’s going to take this primary walking away.”
Let the hijinks begin!