As you cross into New Hampshire from Massachusetts, the
customary Buckle Up For Safety sign greets you at the border. It’s
really more of a suggestion. The bottom of the sign reads,
“Common Sense For All,” not “It’s The Law,” as
you see in virtually every other state in the nation.
That’s because for decades now New Hampshire has resisted
tremendous pressure from the federal government to enact a
mandatory seatbelt law. You don’t have to have car insurance,
either. And for you bikers coming to visit, helmets off at the
state line, if you like.
This allusive little piece of armchair psychology is designed to
shrink all those talking heads as we near New Hampshire’s first in
the nation presidential primary. You see, many spin-doctors will
pretend to understand Granite Staters over the next two months. By
and large they will be well off the mark.
“As a group, they are fiscally conservative and socially
liberal,” reports Slate magazine of New Hampshire voters.
Wrong. As a group, we’re not social liberals. We’re social
libertarians. The difference is yawning.
By way of illustration, imagine some activity reasonably common
among a specific population. Now imagine the consequences of said
activity carry the risk of pain, suffering, frustration, or just
annoyance.
The liberal will kick into regulatory overdrive and try to ban
such an activity. The libertarian, bless his icy little heart, will
shrug his shoulders as if to say, “You probably shouldn’t do that
anymore.”
Got mangled in a car accident? That’s why they make seat belts.
Lost your shirt in a liability settlement? Probably should have
carried car insurance. Smashed your coconut falling off your
motorcycle? They make helmets for those things, you know.
The miscalculations come from the right, as well. Fred Barnes
warns Howard Dean in a recent edition of The Weekly
Standard, “New Hampshire voters take a perverse pleasure in
knocking off frontrunners.” Not true. First of all, there’s nothing
perverse about wanting to smack the smirk off a smarmy, Green
Mountain midget like Dean. Second, we’ve got nothing against
frontrunners. We just really, really hate being told what to
do.
So when the entire GOP establishment came up to New Hampshire
and told us we had to vote for Bob Dole, we voted for Pat
Buchanan instead. When the same collection of party bosses came
back four years later to tell us to vote for George W. Bush, we
voted for John McCain.
During the 1996 Republican primary for governor, popular
Congressman Bill Zeliff had more money, more name recognition, and
more establishment support than his opponent Ovide Lamontaigne,
whom Zeliff had defeated in a head-to-head primary for Congress
four years prior. Ten days shy of the primary, Zeliff and his
opinion leader echo chamber waved a survey in the air and declared
the nomination a fait accompli. You can guess who won the
primary.
Remember Bill Clinton in early 1992? Clinton the draft dodger.
Clinton the womanizer. Clinton the liar, the pot smoker, the
hippie. While he didn’t win the primary, his strong second place
finish earned him the moniker the Comeback Kid.
This trend has already hurt Senator John Kerry, the early
frontrunner in New Hampshire. Kerry picked up a full head of steam
behind the political operation of former Governor Jeanne Shaheen.
But he built his expectations way too high. And he is now suffering
greatly for it. Political observers wait to see if the trend
continues with the current frontrunner Howard Dean.
But there is another dynamic at work that may protect Dean from
the fate of Dole, Bush, and Kerry. New Hampshire Democrats are
among the most repressed people on earth. Republicans control every
single elective office in the state … okay, so the Dems have
a few seats in the state legislature, but very few.
For a brief moment in the sun, they had the Governor’s office.
But this joy was fleeting when Jeanne Shaheen chose her own
political fortunes over her fellow Democrats’ longed-for utopian
dun, the income tax. (Yeah, we don’t have an income tax either
… in fact, we have the lowest tax burden per capita in the
country.) Shaheen, like her Republican predecessors, consistently
threatened to veto the income tax, effectively keeping it far away
from her desk. (Which didn’t keep the voters from going for John
Sununu instead in 2002 when she ran for Senate.)
So the Democrats are angry. Perhaps not as angry as the
professional pamphleteers in perpetual protest against whatever
George W. Bush happens to be doing on any given day, but close.
This helps Dean, whose “last angry man” shtick finds welcome cheers
in Concord, Portsmouth, and Hanover.
So does Dean’s lead show any signs at all of eroding? No, not
according to the numbers anyway. In fact, he seems to grow in
strength with every attack launched at him by his rivals. But his
early pugnacity has evolved into cocksure arrogance, and this will
hurt him. His latest sound bite has it that all he needs to win the
presidency is the Gore states plus New Hampshire. Don’t count those
chickens yet, Howard. Not a single vote has been cast in Dixville
Notch.
And if Dean does fall victim to New Hampshire’s attitude
problem, who will profit? Last week, I listened to a talk by Tom
Rath, Republican National Committeeman for New Hampshire and lay
expert on the New Hampshire primary. According to the data he sees,
John Edwards of all people has the greatest room for growth. If
things turn ugly, Edwards’ relatively high favorability and low
unfavorability will make him a magnet for Democrat voters. I’m not
sure I buy it, but the theory is sound.
The bottom line is, Dean looks like a sure winner. And that’s a
bad place to be two months shy of the New Hampshire primary.
