ALL EYES this weekend are on South Carolina, the Palmetto State, so called because of the palmetto palm trees which flourish in its balmy climate.
Here the Republican candidates vie today, in a vital primary election, for the endorsement of the fundamentalist Christian right which also prospers in this Deep South state like nowhere else.
The focal point of this key Republican constituency is the Bob Jones University, located near the charming city of Greenville in upstate South Carolina.
Founded by Dr Bob Jones in 1927, it is the religious inspiration for the 200 independent churches of the South Carolina Baptist Fellowship and a fulcrum for the Christian conservatism which is setting the agenda as the Republican Party debates social issues.
The college, which bestowed an honorary degree on the Rev Ian Paisley and made him a member of the school's international board of trustees, teaches that the world is 6,000 years old and was created by God in six 24 hour days. Darwin's Origin of the Species can be found in the library, but with a disclaimer that its inclusion does not mean that the university endorses its contents.
The virtually all white school prohibits alcohol, tobacco and inter racial dating and marriage on its campus. It lost its tax exempt status in 1985 because of what the US government called discriminatory practices, though college officials say they do not practise religious discrimination.
They impose a family values lifestyle. Recently Baylor University, the state's largest Baptist school, made headlines by dropping a 150 year prohibition against dancing, but there will be no dancing at Bob Jones University.
"It's just not an issue," the women's student body president, Christy Roland, told the Charlotte Observer. The 5,000 students, who took what the university calls a "minimally difficult" entrance examination to encourage enrolment by anyone willing to live the life defy a world in which youth conformity is an oxymoron.
There has been some slight relaxation of the disciplinary code in recent years. A law forcing women to wear hats to church services was scrapped, as was a regulation that students could vacuum on Sunday but not iron.
Rock music is never heard. Lights out is at 11 p.m. The college is strongly opposed to Catholicism on theological grounds. Anti Catholicism has flourished in the Deep South. In 1987 the South Carolina Baptist Fellowship attacked the visiting Pope John Paul as "anti Christ" and the "man of sin".
But here attitudes are changing. The Catholics and Baptists, the largest two religions in the US, have resolved many differences and found common cause on family values and abortion, an issue that stirs deep passion in the Bible Belt.
"For us, we see it as apples and oranges," Mr Dan Seibert, spokesman for Bob Jones University, told The Irish Times. In theology they are on opposite sides but in the political realm we would be concerned about some of the things Catholics are concerned about. Personally, I would vote for someone who is pro life and takes a stand."
The favoured candidate for the university's students is Pat Buchanan, an Irish American Catholic, who has spoken on the campus to enthusiastic audiences. Mr Buchanan's mixture of Christian fundamentalism and isolationism resonates with the Christian right in a state which exemplifies the contrast between old time religion and modern life.
Highway 85, near Bob Jones University, has been dubbed the "autobahn" because of the foreign firms located beside it.
The Christian right in South Carolina is also attracted by Mr Buchanan's message that the New World Order of trade treaties and UN missions is something evil.
It is not, of course, averse to imposing its own new world order. Notices in the Evangelical Cathedral in Spartanburg, where Mr Buchanan addressed a rally on Wednesday, congratulated members for providing 5,000 Bibles for secret distribution in Vietnam and 500 more in China.
But the good fight is against liberal values in the US, and conservative Catholics and Protestants are fighting it together. Ralph Reed, of the Christian Coalition, which claims 100,000 members in South Carolina, said born again evangelicals and pro life Catholics play a major role promoting Christian values in the presidential election.
"Abortion is worse than the Holocaust," said Ms Jane Caddell after the Spartanburg meeting. She had no problems joining Catholics on this issue. "We fight the same devil."