Tag Archives: republican candidates

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 →

Presidential Candidates: Off and Running

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

From Des Moines, Iowa

At long last, real voters cast real votes on behalf of real candidates. One down, 49 to go and that doesn’t include American Somoa, Guam, the District of Columbia and other U.S. holdings.

You already know what happened last night: Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Rick Santorum essentially tied for first with 25 percent apiece. Rep. Ron Paul faded to third with about 2 percent. Speaker Newt Gingrich preserved a semblance of a win by beating out Gov. Rick Perry about 13 percent to 10 percent with Rep. Michele Bachmann coming in sixth with about five percent of the votes.

The Santorum story here – and it’s a good story – is, months and months of hard work and long road trips finally paid off. After Conservatives in Iowa kicked the tires of the four other candidates: Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich; they decided to take a look at Santorum and decided he was as good as they were likely to get and they made their choice pretty clear. Continue reading →

GOP Debate: Duds, Dirt, and Division

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This debate was actually watchable. I’m not certain if it was because Anderson Cooper was such a good marshal, because the candidates have now done 274 debates, or both, but it was fun to watch.

As you saw, the first 30 minutes (or so) were all about Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. As I Tweeted, if this were a straw poll, then Cain lost because the other six candidates didn’t think 9-9-9 was so swell.

The next 20 minutes was Romney and ObamaCare.

Rick Santorum, attempting to get noticed, kept interrupting Romney and drew boos from the audience. Continue reading →