Category: New Hampshire

2012 Candidates Not Named ‘Herman’

Posted on Comments

It’s kinda been all-Herman, all-the-time here lately, so let me update you on what’s going on with the non-Hermans:

And finally, Newt Gingrich becomes a punchline:

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled (neutral and objective) reminder to join the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain.


Herman Cain Wins 2012 Presidential Forum in Manchester, New Hampshire

Posted on Comments

Of course, that’s not the headline you’ll see in the biased liberal media reports about the Americans for Prosperity forum last night. No, no — they’re all about Mitt Romneycare and Tim Cap-and-Trade Pawlenty. But make no mistake about it: Herman Cain won.

Steve Foley at Citizens for Cain passes along this item from a major New Hampshire political blog: An AFP poll taken after Friday’s event found that 62% of 975 respondents rated Cain the most effective speaker at the Manchester forum. Pawlenty was a distant second, with 17%.

Watch the video:

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

UPDATE: Guess who ignored Herman Cain’s appearance in Manchester? To repeat what I said before: “The ‘smart’ pundits will keep on saying he can’t win, right up until the moment when they start saying he can’t be beat.”

UPDATE II: Linked by Matt Newman at Race for 2012 — thanks!

UPDATE III: I’d like to call your attention to how the Atlantic Monthly‘s Joshua Green described Cain’s performance:

Herman Cain upstaged him by specifically calling to lower the corporate income tax, the personal income tax, temporarily abolish the payroll tax (individual and employer), abolish the capital gains tax, repatriate profits from overseas (abolishing any taxes on those profits), and, the coup de grace, declaring that all this would pay for itself by spurring economic growth.

Now, this is the straight-out supply-sider position and Green, a liberal, obviously takes a dim view of this argument as policy, terming it an “outlandish conservative fantasy.” In term terms of politics, however, Green’s liberalism doesn’t prevent him from acknowledging that Cain “upstaged” Pawlenty.

Green’s larger point is that “Romney was off in just about every facet of his performance” in what was viewed as Mitt’s unofficial 2012 campaign debut. So Romney stunk it up and Cain scored a “coup de grace” against Pawlenty — as even a liberal reporter could see.

UPDATE IV: Via John LaRosa on Twitter, an Associated Press article in the Boston Herald says “Cain got the evening’s biggest laugh.” And there’s also this report from Julie Hirschfield Davis of Bloomberg News:

The most enthusiastic reception was given to fast-food magnate Herman Cain, the onetime chairman of Godfather’s Pizza, whose preacher-like delivery of his five-point plan of lowering taxes and reining in spending drew frequent laughs and applause.

So he got the “biggest laugh” and the “most enthusiastic reception,” in addition to his 62% showing in the AFP poll. What part of “Cain won” is so hard to see here?

UPDATE V: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Speaking of Instapundit, he is featured in the latest episode of Bill Whittle’s PJTV show, about which The Lonely Conservative has some thoughts. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m busy trying to update the breaking news of the latest NATO attack against Moammar Qaddafi.


Judd Gregg Succumbs to Palinphobia

Posted on Comments

In a column for The Hill, the former New Hampshire senator surveys the 2012 GOP presidential primary field and confronts his dread fear that You-Know-Who might win the nomination:

Because the nominating process has become so dominated by primary elections, with the vast majority of the delegates chosen by direct vote, it is entirely possible that with no presumptive winner or even favorites, a candidate who runs second or third in a great many primaries could go into the convention with a sizable block of delegates.
Who would this favor? Does Sarah Palin come to mind? Although she is not viewed by most as strong enough to win, she is viewed by many as a person worth voting for to make a statement. And primaries tend to be populated by people who go to the polls with the purpose of making a statement.
Finishing second and third isn’t really a big deal — until you get enough delegates to be the nominee. And picking a nominee who it seems would be easily defeated by President Obama might not be the best statement.

For crying out loud, Republicans, stop doing this!

In what alternative universe does it make sense for prominent Republicans and conservative pundit to publicly declare that the GOP’s 2008 vice-presidential candidate — clearly one of the favorites of the party’s grassroots — is a guaranteed hopeless loser in 2012?

Who does that help, besides Obama?

Look: Everyone studying the 2012 GOP field has their Please-God-No candidate, or perhaps a short list of them. My own darkest fear is a Draft Jeb Bush movement. (“Read my lips: No more Bushes!“) Among the actual likely candidates, however, the one I absolutely can’t bear to think about is Mike Huckabee. He’s a warm personality but, as Ann Coulter says, Huckabee is essentially a pro-life Democrat.

So obviously, I’m anti-Huck. But what’s the point in beating up on the guy every day when, for all we know, he’ll be up on the stage in Tampa accepting the nomination in August 2012?

Gregg’s name has been bandied about as a 2012 candidate, so perhaps he fancies himself on that stage in Tampa. If so, taking a cheap shot at Sarah Palin — and Clyde Middleton is right, this is a cheap shot — is the best way to move himself to the top of the Please-God-No lists of everyone who supports Palin.

More likely, however, Gregg is trying to play kingmaker. Fine: Let him declare which candidate he supports. Let Gregg tell us whose agenda he is secretly serving by submarining Sarah, and then that candidate can go to the top of the Please-God-No list.

Even if Palin isn’t your first choice for 2012 (my own fondness for Herman Cain is certainly no secret), these public outbursts of Palinphobia are unseemly and counterproductive, unless it is your goal to ensure Obama’s re-election.

DON’T FEAR THE UTERUS!

UPDATE: Linked by Da Tech Guy and The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

Gawker Misspells ‘New Hamshire’ [sic] in Article Slamming Bachmann as Ignorant

Posted on Comments

Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is an accomplished woman — a former federal tax attorney, mother of five, longtime conservative activist — but evidently not a specialist in colonial history or New England geography. Speaking at an event Saturday in Manchester, N.H., Bachmann misplaced the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” producing much guffawing from liberals.

Apparently, Gawker editor Jeff Neumann was so eager to jump on the dogpile he didn’t have time to spellcheck:

No one has ever accused Tea Partiers of being especially bright, but Michele Bachmann blew it pretty hard today in New Hamshire. …

Yeah, Jeff: You blew it pretty hard, too . . .

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And speaking of “self-satisfied condescension,” beloved bird blogger James Wolcott decided to take a cheap shot at Little Miss Attila.


Herman Cain Tops Santorum, Christie, Daniels, Pence, Huckabee in N.H.

Posted on Comments

OK, that’s not the headline on the Politico story, but the order of finish in the New Hampshire GOP straw poll was lots more interesting than the news that Mitt Romney beat Ron Paul:

Romney won with 35 percent, beating second-place finisher Ron Paul by 24 points in the WMUR-ABC News straw poll of members of the state Republican Party. In third place was former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who won 8 percent — just one point ahead of Sarah Palin, who drew 7 percent. . . .
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann won 5 percent, pizza mogul Herman Cain took 4 percent, and Santorum won 3 percent — tied with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

That puts Cain in the top six. I doubt Bachmann will actually run, and Christie has already said he won’t. If Ron Paul doesn’t run this year, where will his voter go? Certainly not to Romney, Pawlenty or Huckabee.

So leaping waaay ahead (which is what liberals are doing when they proclaim this poll a portent of Palin’s certain doom) what would happen if Herman Cain finishes a solid third in the Iowa caucuses? Wouldn’t that pretty much finish off whoever placed fourth and fifth?

And how would such a result affect the undecided GOP primary voters in New Hampshire? I’m just sayin’ . . .

(Via Memeorandum.)

Sour Grapes for Mid-Term Losers

Posted on Comments

Victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan, they say. Another difference is that only defeat requires a scapegoat:

“The Tea Party movement really is quite a bit different than the old Republican conservative movement,” [Delaware loser Mike] Castle said. “They’re more than willing to take out Republicans, call us Republicans in name only, or whatever it may be. It was one thing when you were dealing with Democrats and Republicans. Now you’re dealing with divisions within your own party.”

Since when is the majority — and conservatives are the overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters — responsible for divisions in a coalition? But enough about that useless idiot Mike Castle. Let’s exult in the useless idiocy of defeated Democrats:

Defeated Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.) suggested in a recent interview that Chinese interests contributed to her loss in the November midterm elections. . . .
“I think it’s strangling us,” she told ABC News in a recent interview. “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere, and it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.”

Democrats for Equality, Tolerance and Irrational Xenophobia.

(Via Memeorandum.)