Governor George W. Bush is back as the front-runner in the Republican nomination race after a decisive victory over Senator John McCain in South Carolina. The two rivals left the balmy temperatures of this southern state almost immediately to begin campaigning in the winter snows of Michigan.
The Bush victory will be a huge relief to the Republican establishment which has poured over $70 million into his campaign as the only candidate who can reclaim the White House after eight years of "Clinton-Gore".
The Texas governor's win was largely due to the support of the Christian conservatives. It gives Mr Bush a welcome boost for tomorrow's primary in Michigan where Mr McCain has been narrowly ahead in the opinion polls.
Mr McCain is expected to win the primary in his home state of Arizona, which is also being held tomorrow. The primary elections in each state decide how many delegates will support a candidate in the party conventions next August.
South Carolina turned out to be the protective "firewall" for Mr Bush which his campaign had banked on after the disastrous showing in New Hampshire where Mr McCain humiliated the son of the former president by a 19-point win. A defeat for Mr Bush in South Carolina could have been fatal for the Bush campaign for the White House.
Until his win here on Saturday, Mr Bush had spent about $50 million to win a handful of delegates in Iowa and the small state of Delaware, where Mr McCain had not bothered to campaign. But there was little comparison between the lacklustre Bush campaign in New Hampshire and the fired-up candidate who criss-crossed South Carolina appealing for votes and mocking Mr Mc Cain's claim to be a reformer.
TV and radio ads pounded Mr McCain as a pseudo-reformer who has been a senator in Washington for 17 years and is part of the system which he tries to denounce. Other religious right groups not officially backed by Mr Bush used a massive telephone campaign to throw doubt on Mr McCain's anti-abortion stance.
In the end Mr Bush's wooing of the strong Christian conservative base paid off well. But his shift to the right and appearance at the Bob Jones University, which is critical of Catholicism and bans inter-racial dating, may not play well in Michigan, which has a much bigger Catholic and African-American population than South Carolina.
Mr McCain's strategy of appealing to Democrats and Independents, who were allowed vote in the Republican primary, did not pay off. The record turn-out in South Carolina should have helped Mr McCain get the support of these groups but the hardcore Republicans also came out in large numbers and Mr Bush won two-thirds of their vote to put him a comfortable 11 points ahead of Mr McCain.
The third candidate, a former ambassador, Mr Alan Keyes, won only 5 per cent of the vote, after campaigning solely on moral issues.
Even the military veterans who are a big presence in South Carolina and were expected to give Vietnam war hero McCain an advantage split about evenly between the two main candidates.
Mr McCain did not take his defeat very graciously. In his concession speech in Charleston on Saturday night, Mr McCain told his disappointed supporters that "our crusade grows stronger" but he hit out at Mr Bush, implying that he had not fought "clean" or "fair."
"As this campaign moves forward, a clear choice will be offered," Mr McCain said. "A choice between my optimistic and welcoming conservatism and the negative message of fear." He said he wanted the Presidency "in the best way, not the worst way."
But Mr McCain and his advisers, flushed with their big win in New Hampshire, which favours maverick candidates, made some bad mistakes in South Carolina. One was to run a TV ad comparing Mr Bush with President Clinton for untrustworthiness. Mr Bush retorted in a televised debate that this was a "low blow" from a fellow-Republican.
Mr McCain backed down and said he would withdraw all "negative advertising" but by then Mr Bush's blood was up and his campaign pounded Mr McCain's record in the Senate and for favouring only minimal tax cuts. Mr Bush also queried the Mc Cain tactic of reaching out to Democrats, saying that this was playing into the hands of the opposition and giving it a say in the selection of the Republican Presidential candidate.
For Mr McCain, this was an attempt to emulate Mr Ronald Reagan when he twice won the Presidency with the help of large numbers of so-called "Reagan Democrats" who deserted their traditional party, attracted by Mr Reagan's conservative moral and economic policies.
Michigan will be a better testing ground for this tactic with its strong industrial base of blue collar workers, as it also allows Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. But neither candidate has had much time to campaign in Michigan and TV advertising could give the Bush campaign an advantage because of its bigger resources.