It’s kind of funny that no one knows anyone in New Hampshire. After several cycles in a row of laundering, the new players in the Granite State are all fresh faces with no power-brokering experience. So, who is a Tim Pawlenty supposed to suck up to? Mike Huckabee has to introduce Chuck Norris to someone.
The truth could be that New Hampshire’s Republicans get their news and opinions from distant sources — primarily Fox News, talk radio, and national Web sites like NewsMax and RedState.
It might not be necessary, this time around, for candidates to bother sucking up to local pols, or traipsing through house parties and farmers’ markets in Coos County — as long as you get favorable treatment from Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Erick Erickson.
That new reality might be why, other than Romney and to some extent Pawlenty, none of the 2012 wannabes made any serious effort to help Granite State Republicans in the 2010 midterms — and why a lot of insiders don’t think it did Romney and Pawlenty much good. It might in fact be a whole new ballgame in New Hampshire — one in which the new players aren’t even part of the game.
Right. None of that door-knocking retail politics is going to matter. Everyone can run their campaign from home, like Sarah. The truth is that without a contested contest on the Democratic side the moderates will be voting in the Republican primary. And we know how that turns out, don’t we?
MANCHESTER, N.H. (Feb. 20) — After a tough and testy campaign, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan scored a narrow, stunning victory tonight over Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.
With votes counted from 100 percent of the Granite State’s 300 precincts, Buchanan was ahead of Dole 27 percent to 26 percent. Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander was locked in third place, with 23 percent.
The three men were bunched so closely that analysts predicted a protracted battle for the GOP nomination in this year’s punishing, compressed schedule of primaries and caucusess. Millionaire publisher Malcolm S. “Steve” Forbes Jr. finished a distant fourth with 12 percent and faced an uncertain future.
Buchanan told cheering campaign volunteers the New Hampshire voters who supported him said no to negative advertising, attacks and smears against him.
“They voted their hopes, not their fears,” Buchanan said. “They stood up to the negativists inside the Beltway.” Buchanan called his win “a victory for the good men and women of Middle America.”
So, remember, we don’t know nothing about nothing.
