Just under nine months into the president's term, the state has emerged as a beachhead for the president's most aggressive conservative critics, a secure launching point for some of the harshest attacks on the administration’s policy initiatives.

Its governor, Mark Sanford, led the charge of Republican governors against the Obama economic stimulus plan and made national headlines by arguing that the administration’s excessive spending could lead to an economic collapse on the scale of Weimar Germany. Sanford, in fact, persisted in rejecting Recovery Act funding until a court ordered him to back down.

When Obama turned his attention to health care, South Carolina’s junior senator, Jim ...