Romney's Secret Weapon in South Carolina

As we've noted in recent posts, Mitt Romney appears to be surging in South Carolina, against the conventional wisdom that a Mormon would do particularly poorly in a state where Republican politics are overwhelmingly dominated by the Christian right.

What's Romney's secret? It appears to be former Governor Jim Edwards, who also served as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Energy (and dismantled many programs that would've helped us be much more energy independent by now).

Edwards is backing Romney because he believes the Mitt-meister has the best chance of winning amongst the Republican field.

Here's one way he's helped Massachusetts Mitt: Edwards was largely responsible for the highly publicized endorsement of Romney by super-religious right winger Bob Jones III, which no doubt carries some weight with SC evangelicals.

Edwards evidently convinced BJ3 that Romney can win, and Jones, for his part apparently believes there's little Romney could do in the White House that would have any impact on religion.

Edwards--who, when he was elected, was the first Republican governor in the state since Reconstruction--no doubt has been pulling other strings in the state's GOP establishment, serving as first rate ambassador for Romney. Definitely better than Giuliani's man in SC--Thomas Ravenel--who ended up indicted for crack cocaine distribution!