Tag Archives: New Hampshire

New Hampshire & the Concept of Winning

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Let’s review the concept of winning: Winning, in our culture, means coming in first. You don’t win by coming in second or fifth. You win by coming in first.

Mitt Romney kicked butt last night in New Hampshire with (as of this writing) a 15 percentage point win over Ron Paul. As of 10 PM last night, Romney had received about 38 percent of the votes. Was it 50 percent? No. But the next closest guy had 23. And the next closest guy to him had 17.

And remember the continuing mantra: Romney has a ceiling of 25 percent of support.

To quote Rick Perry: Oops.

That, in spite of a couple of pretty dramatic stumbles in the run-up to voting day and a determined assault on the part of most of the popular press in an attempt to turn this into real news, i.e. Gov. Romney was going to be unpleasantly surprised on election day. Continue reading →

Life & Death of Political Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

A political campaign is like a wedding or the launch of a space vehicle in that the planning and activity starts sometimes years in advance, reaches a frenzied pitch in the last days before the event, then it all stops with “I do,” the “The vehicles has cleared the tower,” or, “We’re reassessing.”

We assume, if none of the parties to the marriage are named Kardashian, the happy couple will settle down to years of house holding and child rearing while the florists, caterers, drivers, and bride’s maids go back to their regular lives.

Having handed control of a space launch over to mission control in Houston, the launch planners likewise turn in their three-ring binders and start the count-down clock for the next mission.

A political campaign that ends, often ends suddenly, and completely.

In the case of Rep. Michele Bachmann, there will be a few weeks of winding down; collecting cell phones and matching rental car records to states in which staffers were supposed to have been working but, that will be handled by the back office staff. Continue reading →

Three Republican Parties

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The results from Iowa show one thing very clearly: There are now three, distinct Republican parties.

The mainstream GOP captured about a quarter of the vote in the caucus polls. The social conservatives got about half. The libertarian got about a fifth.

Iowa is a bit skewed towards social conservatives. New Hampshire will show that the mainstream Republicans make up about a third of the party, the social conservatives about a third, while libertarians make up a third.

Mainstream Republicans are business-minded. They are the establishment folks. They are both small business owners and corporate employees. They are the Chamber of Commerce Republicans. They want the government to help business. Some mainstream Republicans are neo-conservative and care about defense issues, but mostly they view the world through the prism of business. Continue reading →

Perry, Paul, & Romney

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com & Townhall.com

I was in Las Vegas Friday night as the guest of the conservative Citizen Outreach organization. We got to talking about the importance which may be visited upon the Nevada caucuses this year which, on the GOP side of the ledger has never been that big a deal.

A couple of weeks ago Florida decided to move its GOP primary up by about a month to January 31. That set all the other early states into a frenzy trying to figure out when they should hold their caucuses (Iowa and Nevada) or primaries (New Hampshire and South Carolina).

As of this writing the guessing is, Iowa will move its caucuses up to January 3; New Hampshire to January 7; Nevada to the 14th; and, South Carolina to January 21.

That means, the week between Christmas and New Year will be spent in places like Red Oak and Clear Lake, Iowa; and Claremont and Gottstown, New Hampshire.

As Mullfave Ed Rollins pointed out last week, “you can’t live off the land in Florida like you can in the other early states.”

Nevada’s population is centered around Clark County (Las Vegas and its environs) and Washoe County (Reno) so you can organize there pretty easily. South Carolina’s population is more than four million and spread out throughout the state, but SC is geographically the 10th smallest state so driving from point A to point M (or wherever) is not much of a challenge.

Florida is a different kettle of alligators. Continue reading →

The Age of Digital Campaigns

BY RICH GALEN

Reprinted from mullings.com

 We’re probably within a week of the first Republican candidate to file papers opening an exploratory committee to “test the waters” in the 2012 Presidential campaign.

  Continue reading →

Media Missed Mark on Campaign Coverage

By Michael S. Johnson

Delta Airlines’ Sky Magazine had a 26-page spread last month on the Midwest’s new tourist hotspot, North Dakota . It featured Governor– and now U.S. Senator-elect– John Hoeven, who  gets much of the credit for making North Dakota one of the most prosperous states in the country.

Continue reading →