South Carolina is known as a huge republican battleground as it is the "first in the south" primary and since 1980 no Republican has won the Primaries without also winning this state. South Carolina is also known for extremely dirty politics. Examples are airing rumors of Hillary being a lesbian and mass mailings about how Mormonism is a "politically dangerous religion." See this article for more details.
It should be noted that the man, Warren Tompkins, who derailed McCain in 2000 has been hired by Romney. This man is also known as "God of Hell" An interesting choice eh?
But what does this have to do with Ron Paul you are all no doubt wondering? Well, it starts with the fact that Paul is still seen as a nobody by the other campaigns. Because of this they will focus on tearing down the "serious" candidates and airing their laundry. And ALL of the "serious" candidates have a LOT of laundry to air so we will see some interesting things come to light and whether true or not some will stick. But Paul has no laundry to air. Paul is as clean as it is possible for a politician to be! Perhaps even cleaner.
What this means is that while the others are playing dirty and throwing mud, Paul will be airing his positives. the "serious" candidates will be hurt and Paul will get a de facto boost. This state could turn out quite well for us Paulites.
P.S. do you think Hillary will take a queue from her husband and wag her finger at us and say "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"? Cuz that would be just too great! Someone should piece together a YouTube video of her saying that.