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Off Message 5 takeaways from the GOP debate

There’s just something about South Carolina — maybe it’s the bad-karma ghost of John C. Calhoun (the ideological godfather of secession) — that just brings out the snarling mean in conservatives.

More likely it’s the palpable fear among GOP candidates that Donald Trump is running away with the Republican nomination that accounted for the foul mood that descended on the sour debate stage in Greenville, South Carolina, on Saturday night.

The Five Republicans Who Could Be President

We began with more than 20 Republican candidates. Seventeen made it to a formal announcement. Eleven reached Iowa. Now six remain; and with Ben Carson going nowhere, only five have a chance to win the nomination. Here is how each of them could do that.

GOP candidates woo SC evangelicals

With the national political spotlight shifting to the Bible Belt, Republican presidential candidates camped out in South Carolina have begun stepping up their campaigns to win over evangelicals – a group that’s expected to make up nearly 60 percent of the vote in the state’s GOP primary on Feb. 20.

“I reassess the future of the campaign every day so of course I will continue to do that,” Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says on MSNBC.

Ben Carson said Wednesday he will be staying in the Republican race, despite a poor showing in New Hampshire, and is hoping to win big in South Carolina.

Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are all guaranteed an invitation to the debate because they finished in the top three in the Iowa caucuses.

For the other candidates, it will require finishing in the top five in Tuesday night’s New Hampshire primary, or in the top five in an average of national and South Carolina polls. Those polls must be approved by CBS News and released before noon on Feb. 12.

Race Goes to South Carolina, With No Clear Republican Threat to Trump

With Donald J. Trump’s decisive victory in New Hampshire and no strong runner-up among a pack of also-rans, the Republican race barreled into South Carolina on Wednesday shadowed by a question: whether any alternative candidate can gain enough support to threaten Mr. Trump’s drive to the nomination.