Ask anybody who knows anything and they’ll tell you that no one has ever won both the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary and then failed to go on to win their party’s nomination. But look a little deeper and you’ll see that this is not a very firm model for what can happen in the upcoming primary. First, even though the New Hampshire Primary has been going on a long time, the Iowa Caucasus have only been running since 1972, which means there have been 10 of them. And the total number of times someone has won both is is once for the Democratic party (if you exclude sitting presidents or a vice president heir apparent) and the only time its ever happened with the Republicans (again, not counting sitting presidents or heir apparent VP’s) is, well, never.
Therefore, if Mitt Romney wins the New Hampshire Primary, it really means nothing. He only won the Iowa Caucuses by fewer than 20 votes, so really, he and Santorum share the lead. And, winning both is simply something that has happened so infrequently when there was an open field that it matters not.
So, what do the polls say? The Suffolk-7News tracking poll currently shows Romney on top with a commanding 35 percent, with the hapless and hopeless Ron Paul a distant 20, and the “He was a dark horse last week” Rick Santorumm Huntsman, and Gingrich all with about 10 points plus or minus. So, at the lower end of the field, anything could happen.
The times that the New Hampshire Primaries have mattered, some unusual results have happened. White Supremacist and general all round dick Pat Buchanan had that one surprise victory. Harold Stassen won once. And remember last time around? Obama, then Clinton, then Obama, etc. etc.?
That, by the way, is what I’m predicting this time around. Romney will probably take New Hampshire but he will not maintain the lead in the Republican Party, or if he does, it will be tenuous. We see the same configuration going into South Carolina as New Hampshire, so I may be sticking my neck out with this prediction, but I’m fairly sure New Hampshire has earned its reputation for producing surprises.
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Grandpa is up to the task!
He’ll soon pick who wins
New Hampshire, and then
the idiocy will be unmasked.
Grandpa, the howler monkey described as “barely psychic”, will be picking the winner of the New Hampshire primary today. Well, he’ll be choosing a banana with a candidate’s name written on it, but is REALLY that much different from how we do things?
My feeling, how I’d answer this as an interested spectator, is that Mitt Romney will be the winner – and he’ll easily end up as the 2012 Republican nominee.
Why? Because Mittens is by far and obviously the least worst (realistic*) Republican candidate even with his mormon magic jocks. I think he’s a safe bet for Republican nominee and would be *very* surprised if one of the many crazy not-Romney contenders somehow gets up. I think it’s not an open field – more just a weak one. These are the best they can do? Yeesh.
Whether he can beat Obama in 2012 is another question again and will depend on a lot of things mainly I predict the state of the US (& global) economy at the time.
Maybe, hopefully, if Romney wins ( approx. 60:40 against?) he won’t be too bad for the USA and world as a relative moderate who may be able to drag the Republicans back towards the centre and calm down the overheated partisan rhetoric & atmosphere somewhat?
PS. Yeah, I’m kinda stating the obvious in most of thisexcept maybe that last paragrpah. Still.
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* Realistic runners sadly NOT incl. Jon Huntsman & including as a very unlikey option the disgusting Santorum. I’d say right now its already down to just Romney, Gingrich, Paul & Santorum.
I think this time it won’t matter much who will win in New Hampshire, but who will come second, and by how much.
The Teabagger vote is currently split between four candidates : Gingrich, Perry, Santorum and Bachmann. The only threat to Romney’s nomination is one of those four managing to rally that whole section of the vote behind them – and that will largely depend on whether one of them manages to pull away from the others during the early primaries.
If Romney wins, and Santorum finishes a strong second, Romney’s position is far worse than if Romney wins and Paul finishes a distant second, for example.
Romney will win NH, and he is leading at the moment in SC. Florida will be the decision maker (where I spend winter). I think Romney will most likely take the nomination and then lose to Obama 55%-45%. It is so easy to rip apart Willard Mittens’ positions, since he has taken all sides of every issue. He is a prostitute for votes and cares little about the actual issues and most people will see that in the general election.
If Romney wins, and Santorum finishes a strong second, Romney’s position is far worse than if Romney wins and Paul finishes a distant second, for example.
I agree with that. Paul has a strong organization, though, so the same could be said for as strong Paul second.
I don’t have much to say on the above topic (I suppose that means I should shut up, I guess) except that the more and more that I read about the US electoral system, the more and more confused I become. It seems to me that it’s kinda like like religion, in that it’s a system created by an ancient patriarchy, and people follow it because they don’t know any better. Except with religion, at least there is an alternative.
What baffles me the most about the process is that Americans know that Election Day is in November, and yet I have been hearing about people campaigning since January of last year. Here in Canada, when someone calls an election, 3 months later, we have a new Government. Easy-peasy.
And that, to me, is what’s most fucked up about the system. That it takes so damn long to even pick someone that’s going to run for President, and then the candidates start campaigning all over again. Seems like a huge waste of time and effort to me (not to mention money).
It’s sad that starting 3 years from now, they’ll be doing it for both parties.