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For a party that dominates South Carolina as thoroughly as the Republican Party, there are clear signs that frustration ó and worse ó with the national GOP and growing divisions at home are creating the potential for rough sailing with the state's 2006 elections 30 days away.

The scandal over disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's sexual overtures to teenage male pages and the GOP leadership's handling of it have added to the disillusionment and stopped the modest Republican momentum born of President Bush's September drive to make the war on terror, not the deteriorating Iraq situation, the focal point of congressional elections.

Interviews with Republicans at party events over the past two weeks suggest a combination of apathy and anger, the latter fed by a sense of conservative ideals betrayed in Washington, not enough for defections, but enough for some to sit out Nov. 7. With the Foley matter, there arose concern that the GOP congressional control will be lost and an emerging worry that once safe statewide races may now be contests.

They showed a range of emotions, anger at a sense of a sell-out in Washington, fear that hard-won congressional control will be lost and, for some, a feeling that a national purging defeat may be in the GOP's best long-term interests.

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At home, the attitude is cautious apprehension.

Some "tossups" may have been created," said former Gov. David Beasley. "It creates issues we didn't have here."

"The spillover is (voters will say) 'they're all crooks' and anybody in public service gets tainted, but falls mostly heavily on the party in charge," said Dave Woodard, a Clemson University political science professor and Republican pollster.

"Trepidation," was the response from Republican consultant Bob Knight when asked how he is approaching the November election. He and other Republicans are "downcast at the certain possibility this isn't going to be a good year...a new feeling from where we were even two weeks ago," Knight said.

Beasley said he's "very concerned that all of this scandalous activity in Washington is going to impact, not just across the country, but even have a negative impact on Republican turnout in South Carolina. If any campaign takes the position that it doesn't, they'd better get their head out of the sand," Beasley said.

Clemson's Woodard noted that "Republicans staying home is the great danger. In some of those races, turned off voters can be the difference between winning and losing. More and more, I'm coming to see that elections are won and lost more on turnout than partisanship."

With the Foley incident, "the elections are absolutely up in the air" and with them, the GOP's hold on the House and Senate, former Speaker Newt Gingrich told reporters in Greenville on Wednesday.

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, writing in his weekly on-line column, said Foley scandal "couldn't have exploded at a worse time for congressional Republicans."