CONCORD, N.H. — When you get to New Hampshire on the map,
Homer, put that blue crayon down.
Recent and melancholy electoral results in the Granite State
don’t justify conceding the only remaining state in the Northeast
with any conservative DNA to the Democrats. There’s no liberal
surge here. Folks here aren’t ready to change the license plate
legend from “Live Free or Die” to “Just a Bunch of Wusses Like the
Rest.”
Regardless of what you hear or read to the contrary, New
Hampshire is in play for 2008. And it remains as important in
presidential politics as it’s been since before Studebaker went
broke. Important because of the unique brand of retail politics
practiced here, and because state law requires New Hampshire’s
presidential primary to precede any other state’s by a week. New
Hampshire will remain ahead of the other states currently trying to
cut the line, even if that means a 2007 primary for a 2008 race.
(“Put down that drumstick, Mildred, time to vote.”)
New Hampshire has a Democratic governor and Democratic
majorities in both houses of its state legislature, which hasn’t
happened since the 19th century. The state went slenderly to
Jean-Francois Kerry in ‘04 and then lost the state legislature and
both of its seats in the U.S. House to the Democrats in ‘06. All in
what has been essentially a conservative and a Republican state for
most of this century and the last. New Hampshire State Republican
Chairman Fergus Cullen told me these results are “not a fluke,” but
rather a result of “a unique confluence of events not likely to
happen again.” He insists the odd political lineup does not reflect
a philosophical change in the state. Almost all of the dozens of
politicians, journalists, and just plain interested voters (lots of
these per square yard up here) told me they agree with this
analysis.
The confluence Cullen speaks of had to do with a big-spending
and seemingly incompetent Republican administration in Washington
and with real unease about the direction of the war in Iraq. Add a
Republican-led Congress more interested in earmarks for their
districts and in appeasing the left than in pursuing conservative
principles, and the result was enough dispirited Republicans
staying home election day to allow the Democrats to run the
table.
But New Hampshire Democrats shouldn’t get too comfortable. While
Democrat governor John Lynch remains popular, the two Democratic
U.S. House members have made few friends — polls show their
favorable ratings in the 30s — by their consistently way-left,
Pelosi-clone, voting. And the new Democratic legislature has
annoyed lots of voters by enacting nanny-state stuff like smoking
bans, seat-belt laws, civil unions for gays, and other stuff
Democrats do when they are without adult supervision. (See above re
“Live Free or Die.”) The Democrats have also increased state
spending 17 percent in a fiscally conservative state. So the
recently victorious Democrats are vulnerable to the right kind of
Republican candidates, from the top of the ticket to the
bottom.
AS FOR THE TOP, it was an easy trick in my week’s visit here to
catch Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo
strutting their stuff in venues including a country store, an
auditorium at a solar panel manufacturer, a small concert hall,
restaurants, and individual homes. Rudy fetched more than 300 at
the solar manufacturer, and Tom Tancredo talked and answered
question for more than a hour for 16 people at a home in Concord.
All of these guys stressed getting good results in Iraq and the
wider war with Islamo-jihadists. They pledged that if elected they
would get control of America’s borders and let only the right
people in for the right reasons. They hit traditional Republican
themes of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and the
superiority of the market and free personal associations over a
smothering nanny-state. As Giuliani put it, “I have compassion for
people — so I want to help them rather than take over their
lives.”
George W. Bush was almost never mentioned by either the
candidates or by those questioning them. Nor did global warming
ever come up.
All these guys are articulate, compelling, and stand a good
chance with themes like these in a state with a plurality of voters
who are essentially conservative, but with a fairly wide
libertarian streak. I’m told even Fred Thompson with his Tennessee
drawl has a shot in New Hampshire. “We like good ole boys up here,”
Nashua Telegraph columnist and conservative radio
commentator Jennifer Horn told me.
Many here have real problems with how the war in Iraq is going.
But Democrats make a big mistake if they think most voters in New
Hampshire consider “Let’s quit! — Let’s quit!” a foreign policy.
It’s clear enough which party wants to retreat and which is ready
to engage our enemies.
MY MAIN REASONS for visiting New Hampshire was to visit with an old
friend, to escape Tampa’s oppressive summer heat, and to catch the
Sawks at Fenway (they came from behind to beat the Angels before
more than 36,000 of Manny Ramirez’s closest and most vocal
friends). But I also took the occasion for a close look at New
Hampshire’s storied retail presidential politics. I’m glad I did.
Things in this arena are alive and well. New Hampshire, along with
Iowa, is still vetting the candidates for the rest of the country
in that up close and personal way. Nothing packaged about the way
candidates here are obliged to answer sometimes pointed and mostly
intelligent questions, usually far away from television
cameras.
When these guys leave New Hampshire, they’ll move on to states
where campaigning is wholesale, where packaging for TV rules, and
where the voters don’t get nearly the opportunity to talk back as
they do here. Even Tom Tancredo wouldn’t talk to 16 people in a
private home in Florida, not unless there were TV cameras there. In
New Hampshire, voters get the measure of candidates, and put them
on the spot in ways they just can’t do elsewhere. It helps the
savvy and engaged voters here make up their minds, it helps the
rest of us better understand those who want to be America’s CEO,
and it will still give the candidates who win here a heck of a
bump.
