That was suspenseful. One minute after the polls close and everybody’s called it for Romney. Not that I thought it might end any differently.
CNN currently showing Romney at 36%, Paul 24%, Huntsman 18%. With 14% of districts reporting.
MSNBC has called Paul to place 2nd.
OK, new question: does Huntsman drop out tonight or tomorrow?
I very much enjoyed hearing about all the people on the news who admit to lying to pollsters. NH takes politics seriously, but not so seriously to be above screwing with people who call during supper.
Did anyone else vote? I’m curious if the ballots are screwed up statewide, or if it was just in my area. Instead of being properly alphabetical, the candidates with surnames S-V were first, then followed by B-R.
Huntsman and Santorum need to pack it in. That would take out one anti-Romney and one anti-anti-Romney, whom I guess would mutually annihilate each other and release a lot of energy.
So it’s going to be Romney. Assuming he loses, whose turn will it be in 2016? I have to go with his VP pick.
Not sure, I think Huntsman is blatantly playing for 2016. I think at least a few GOP contenders kept their hats out of the ring because they didn’t view Obama as being weak enough to justify risking their shot in 2012. I actually think it’s a bit closer now than it was when the campaign season first started, when the campaign season first started I felt Obama was going to win even bigger than he did in 2008. Now I think he’ll still win but in a closer election, so it could tighten up if some major problem comes up, like a double dip recession or some disastrous foreign policy boondoggle.
Yes, the Republicans always pick the person whose turn it is. That’s why whatsername from Alaska is cruising to the nomination today. Romney isn’t winning because it’s his turn. He’s winning partly because he is running a better campaign than in 2008 and partly because he’s the only one running a campaign that could even be termed semi-competent.
“whatshername from Alaska” was not next in line, Romney was. Whatshername came out of nowhere to court the crazy vote in '08, then burned out her crazy flame whoring it for Fox before getting out-crazied by Bachmann and O’donnell. She was the Tea Party darling, not the GOP establishment darling. The GOP establishment still picks the candidate, especially now, when the Tea Party as a whole is polling as the least popular faction in Congress.
Romney has more of a claim to it being his turn than the Quittinator does. Reagan, Bush The Competent, Dole, and McCain were all nominated because it was their turn after running unsuccessfully before. The only exception to this rule since Reagan has been W.
Now, should Romney win the nomination, whose turn will it be next time? You really can’t point your finger at any of his 2012 rivals and say it would be their turn next time. Therefore, I’m going with the veep nominee, providing it is someone at least semi-competent.
Nothing personal, but I think if she’d run, there’s a good chance you would be saying something different. Knowing who the candidates are, it’s easy to make them fit into this tired storyline. The only candidates from 2008 who are running this year are Romney and Paul.
I don’t want to go off on a tangent here, but the bottom line is that this is what you get when you only analyze a result and not how it happened. GHW Bush wasn’t nominated because “it was his turn after running unsuccessfully before.” He was nominated because he was the sitting VP to a two-term president and was the obvious choice to succeed Reagan. Dole’s status as an elder statesman probably did help in an election the party wasn’t optimistic about anyway. McCain didn’t get nominated because it was his turn. That makes it sound like everyone agreed he was the choice, but his campaign almost fell apart before the voting even started and he was fortunate to have time to recover. There were times he was running behind Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and a bunch of others. Romney has always been at or near the top in this campaign- not because it’s his turn but because he’s been running for president almost continuously since 2007 and had a lot of time and money to build a campaign.
I agree that none of these losers are going to have a good shot in the future.
Anyway it’s now a week and a half until the South Carolina primary. South Carolian has a reputation for attracting some really nasty campaigning, so this should be interesting.
Let the push-polling begin!
Gingrich knows a lot about pushing his pole, all right . . .
Small hijack, but I heard on that radio that NH had the nation’s first primary. Then I remembered that Iowa had the first caucus. Primary, caucus…what’s the difference?
This is my understanding of it:
A primary is a relatively straightforward election. I think all the primaries now have you simply voting for your preferred candidate, and delegates to the national convention are assigned based on the vote totals. (Some primaries are winner-take-all, and some assign delegates based on the percentage of the vote each candidate got.) It’s pretty similar to the presidential election itself.
A caucus is a set of meetings. The voters gather at the local level to argue, listen to speeches, and vote for delegates who go to a state convention. At the state convention, the local delegates vote in turn for delegates to send to the national convention. That may be oversimplified–I think there are usually more tiers of meetings between the local caucus and the state convention–but that’s the general idea. This is an older system, and quite a bit messier, but I think it does provide some additional tactical options.