Ramblings on New Hampshire

So, what happened?

Basically it's no different than buying a new car. You go into the showroom and your eye is caught by the sleek, sexy new sports car. After a few minutes, though, you realize you can't afford it and you go with the old but sturdy used car.

So long as Obama was just a fantasy he was attractive, they even took him for a test drive. But when the salesman demanded to know if they were buying, they knew how unrealistic this one-third of a term Senator with the radical leftist agenda offering nothing other than cute slogans was and went with the old but sturdy sedan.

What does John Edwards do now? His angry, hate-America-always, attacks saw over eighty percent of the voters reject him. Why vote for pretty and angry when you can vote for pretty and upbeat. Interesting, isn't it, that the woman is the least pretty of the three?

So...what happens next? Here's my GUESS:

If/when Edwards drops out -- I can't imagine anyone being stupid enough to send him money and he's too in love with his millions to spend much more of his own -- those votes go to Obama. Does that make Obama a winner? Nope, for the more you know about Obama the less you like him, the longer the campaign goes on the more of his votes go to the only option left. In other words, there's a straight line from "hate America" to "change" to "oooh, I don't want THAT change."

On the other side?

I'd say there were a lot of big winners and almost no losers.

That is...obviously this was a huge win for McCain. He needed a victory, he got one, that puts him into play. Against conventional wisdom, it was an okay night for Romney, NH as a special case (independents voting for the Republican nominee) sees his solid second place finish following the win in Wyoming following a solid second place finish to a DIFFERENT winner leaves him solid as the campaign goes beyond the eighty-two people that make up Iowa, Wyoming and New Hampshire. He does need to win Michigan but, coming out of the early rounds he is far from beaten.

Huckabee didn't lose, either. He wasn't expected to do well, he didn't do well, but he did come out in the top three and that's the ticket. He has a major win, a ticket from NH and South Carolina coming up soon.

Ron Paul was in single digits at nine, but that's where you'd expect him to be. After all, something like six percent of the people still think Elvis is alive, that means, with all his campaigning and the children fueling his campaign, he beat Elvis by three percentage points.

Thompson. Big loser at one percent. Don't know how hard he campaigned or how much money he spent but that's only one percentage point more than I got and I got to sleep in my own bed the whole time.

Big winner? Giuliani. Why? Because, as wrong-headed as I think his decision to forfeit the early battles was, it is his strategy and in order for it to work there could be no better outcome than what it is: the first three contests, with three different winners, with Romney winning neither of the ones that get the coverage.

So...are there any guarantees? Only one: if Barack loses the left will cry "racism." If Hillary loses the left will cry "sexism" and, either way, they'll find the justification they need to continue to hate America.