Amidst the wreckage of the New Hampshire Primary...

Trust Joanie Vennochi to extract one last asinine column from the whole mishaugas.
In her wrap up for the above primary Joanie indulges this howler in respect of Barack Obama's candidacy:
He dazzled a packed field house with a beautifully delivered speech, bursting with inspirational riffs. At the end, hands reached out to touch him, as if he were Bobby Kennedy. Obama's rhetoric, too, has a 1960s feel that many aging flower children could groove to.

"Aging flower children"...shit Joanie you can do better than that...If Obama was John Kerry you'd a been happily questioning his manhood long before this.

Well I think I've finally figured out Joanie problem, she really can't play defense...reduced to defending Hillary Clinton in today's column she wanders like rhetorical landscape like an abashed agnostic in a Cathedral before belittling John Edwards' debate performance...but then Edwards was Kerry Vice Presidential candidate so that helps generating the necessary venom.

Well Humble Elias called it...

all WRONG mind you, but he called it nonetheless.

:D

McCain trounced Romney and Clinton edged past Obama by three points...that is what I get for taking the polls seriously.
But what happened to Senator Clinton, isn't hard to understand, older women broke for her in droves and with the weather being balmy for New Hampshire some sort of upset was in the air.
She did well because tens of thousands of New Hampshire women marched to the polls and knifed their husbands in the back...figuratively speaking.
They've been quietly putting dinner on the table for years now while their bloated sagging husbands ranted and raved with the latest of Rush Limbaugh's taking points. At some point, voting for Hillary seemed the most sublime payback.
I observed this phenomenon at close range in New Hampshire going door to door for various candidates back in the day, the loud mouthed slob of a husband snarls and barks about "taxes" and "feminazis" meanwhile out in the kitchen you could see the wife throwing dagger eyes at hubbie.
This is the sort of thing that could well crop up again and again in other states, plenty of women are sick and tired of their husband's bluster and the INEVITABILITY of blundering egomaniacal choice for president.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the former first lady, she has her virtues though, what was nice to see was the sheer consternation and embarrassment on the faces of those smug & biased bastards in the media who had scheduled a square dance on Hillary Clinton's political grave.
The republic almost always benefits when they are proven wrong.

***

How about that Mitt Romney?
He spent forty five million big ones to date, seventeen of it his own money, and all he has to show for it is winning the semi-outlaw Wyoming Primary.
And honestly he really really did look like his head was gonna explode last night.
Precious and lovely indeed.

GOPocalypse Now...

Hold it....just a moment, let me savor....yesss!!!
ROMNEY IS DEFEATED!!!!
***

Oh watching Willard grin humorlessly and grind his jaw like an orangutang tonight was precious and lovely to behold. Those beady little eyes of his were sodden with repressed rage and hatred...you could tell he was totalling up in his mind ever dollar he'd flung at New Hampshire only to lose to an aging senate blowhard who was billed below the trained birds and the cheap acts not ninety days ago.
Ah but Willard never fails us, his "concession speech" tonight was naught but his chintzy standard stump oration with a different closer.
I actually felt bad for the battered die-hards in the hall tonight who were chanting "WE LOVE MITT!" before the cameras, it wasn't quite a rousing chorus of "Nearer My God to Thee" on the boat deck of the Titanic...but it was the best they could do.
Nothing so illustrates Romney's amateurism, than this sad tawdry end to what amounts to a long running inexplicable political delusion.
It has been a long bleak journey since election night 2006 when Mitt practically shoved Kerry Healey aside to test out his presidential stump speech on TV even as his faithful Lieutenant Governor was buried in an electoral landslide...but the end nonetheless is upon us. How much longer are Tagg and his brothers gonna let Daddy spend their children into pauperism with this cockammmamie presidential mishaugas?

it is OVER Mitt, give it up, they got too good a look at you and went with the old Golem with the bleached blonde trophy wife!
Forget it, that two minute commercial last night all but killed you in the polls, smarmy insincere, you lost a half a percentage point per ten secounds on that one.
FACE IT!
The more they see of you, the less they like you!
It is nothing personal guy, but you have (In the words of the late Lenny Bruce) a talent for making people vicious!
Just give it up, show some self respect for once in your life.

Thought for the day...

If Mitt Romney loses the New Hampshire Primary tonight, and that still is a big if, he'll be only the second modern Massachusetts pol so rejected by the Granite State's famously fidgety electorate.
The other being Teddy Kennedy in 1980 who lost to Carter.
The irony will not be lost on either man if it happens.
:D

Today and Tonight...

The weather is clear and warm for January in New Hampshire, that could bring more seniors out to vote as the day wears on. That might be good news for John McCain who despite his optimistic tone is locked in a tight race with Willard Mitt Romney. What McCain needs a nice early exit poll say around 5 or 6pm at the latest noting that Obama is way out ahead with the democrats, news like that might tempt independent voters who are commuting home from Boston to throw their votes to the Arizona Senator.
He is aided somewhat by the somewhat bizarre turn Romney has taken in his advertising, full on head shots of Mitt talking away...with each moment he becomes smarmier and more insincere.
On th' other side
Senator Clinton looks nervous, she has gone populist way late in the process, the tilt might have worked two or three months ago, but the current truncated schedule reduces the real New Hampshire primary to a bare five days. This in some ways advantages the winner of the Iowa Caucuses who has some useful short lived momentum going into the New Hampshire primary.
In some ways, Obama's strategy mirrors John Kerry's approach in 2004, use Iowa to leverage New Hampshire, worked for JK and Jimmy Carter and it may work for Senator Obama tonight.
John Edwards is hoping for a miracle, which for him means once again edging Clinton for the second spot which in turn might give him a toe hold however small in South Carolina.

Therefore Humble Elias predictions run this way (Hey if Steve Stark can do em' so can I)
The democrats:
Senator Obama by eight points
Senator Clinton second
FOrmer Senator Edwards a very close third.
Richardson a distant fourth.

Gravel, Kucinich and Richardson have about fourteen days left before the curtain rings down.

The GOP:
McCain by three to five points in a late night nail biter.
Romney in a close run loss, the final issue gets exported to South Carolina for resolution.
Huckabee a distant but happy third. his will be the happiest most rousing concession speech tonight. All he needs to do today is to look competitive, his campaign is already looking to other contests in states with big evangelical voting cohorts.
Guiliani will run fourth clueless to his own impending disolution. However Rudy will hang on til Super Tuesday at least on the sheer forward thrust provided by raw ego.

Thompson, Hunter and Paul are toast along with anyone else I'm forgetting....Keyes was toast four years ago.

Let the games begin, see if Humble Elias can get anything Right!
:D

Hey the Chimes at Midnight scooped the Globe...

who noted in their campaign wrap up this morning, that most of Romney's questioners from yesterday's event in Nashua came from out of state.
In fact three out of the five questions tossed to him, came from persons who presumably could not vote in the New Hampshire Primary.
I don't presume to infer much from that factoid, there is a certain amount of spectacle of a kind that attends on the New Hampshire Primary that attracts a sporting sort of crowd, certainly it is no indicator of Romney's potential vote tomorrow.
The Globe also claims there were four hundred people in the room, how they arrived at that number I do not know since it was an unticketed, open to the public event.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen sez that the GOP race is tight and a lot depends on what increment of the independent vote McCain can drag into the GOP Primary tomorrow. If McCain wins even if he edges Romney it's the end of Willard's presidential hopes, he promised an old fashioned blitzkreig and got whipped by a giddy baptist shaman and the senate's most ill tempered blowhard.
A hard position to move up from to be sure.
Even if Romney wins, it might not be good news, McCain has but to close within five percentage points to seriously impede Romney's momentum.
Under this scenario the decision will be essentially exported to South Carolina, which is volatile ground for a candidate with no serious victories under his belt.
But honestly, I do hope he loses tomorrow night, you just know he won't take it well, Willard might even blow over the edge live on camera in a really interesting way.
The more I reflect on it, I wished I could've asked Romney his views on Darwin's theory of natural selection yesterday...I think his head would've exploded.

Twilight of the Fraud...(?)

There is no beating around the Bush, Mitt Romney is a colossal bore. He may be unthreateningly handsome, well groomed with a morbidly perfect family, but that clacking machine gun monotone of his is a reliable and cost effective substitute for surgical anesthesia.
Yes indeed, late in the game, Humble Elias made the trek into New Hampshire to see Mitt's stump speech in it's natural setting, a GOP rally evenly divided between news media and actual attendees. The setting is built around a huge "To Do" List composed of poll-tested over-marketed GOP effluvia...I can't recall a single point out of the twelve or so listed, certainly whatever was up there was uncontaminated by any originality. Anyway, the list itself is unimportant, Mitt can't implement any of it even if he really wanted to...it"s a campaign gimmick and a cheesy one, whoever dreamt it up was paid too much for the work as furnished.
By the way, if you are interested in what Barbara Anderson is doing these days, she is pimping hard for Romney, introducing him at events all over New Hampshire. Babs tends to rattle on and on about Prop 2.5 and other oddments of no interest to the locals during her warm-up.
A thought just struck me? Is Babs still pro-choice? Or has she flipped on that out of love for the Former Viceroy?
Well whatever her stance on abortion, she is resolute in her immoderate praise for Citizen Romney, which only begs the question "If Mitt was such a great governor why'd he abandon Massachusetts after only one term?"
And then Mitt comes out in a gleaming white button down shirt and tie belching a whole bunch of promises he will never condescend to keep including a solemn pledge to end partisan strife in DC, which is hilarious given the gruesome and nasty tenor of his current round of attack ads.
He also made the usual demogogic noises about illegal immigration which got him the expected animal roar of approval - indeed this was his strongest applause during the whole appearance. Then there is his plan for universal health care by imposing universal thrall-dom to the insurance companies, his pledge to make strong families a national security issue and his solemn promise to over-ride death and divorce courts to ensure every household has a mommy and daddy.
It'd be scary stuff if Romney believed any of it, but his tone is so rushed and robotic, you just know he thinks very little of his own promises.
His voice never rises about a hurried monotone, eyes glaze over all around the room when he started spouting detailese which are the short of trivial factums that have to be piled up high to make a fundamental cliche' seem formidable.
Ironically, this is where Mitt is at his dullest, it is also when he almost makes his peace with the Commonwealth, citing all sorts of "progress" made by him under his enlightened Viceroyalty.
All of which AGAIN raises the question "If he was such a superhumanly effective Governor why did he leave after one term and turn the corner office over to a liberal democrat as well?"
Good thing everyone was so enervated by the tedium otherwise all sorts of ackward questions might have cropped up.
The event was billed as "Ask Mitt Romney Anything", it shoudl have been called "I'll answer FIVE and then I'm out of here!"
Of those five questions, tellingly, only two were asked by actual residents of New Hampshire...clearly there were a lot of out of state well wishers in that room as evidenced by the many Massachusetts license plates in the parking lot.
Then Mitt tells an inspiring story, rings down the curtain and is done with yet another uninspired performance. Cliches are enunciated and then duly defended by even more cliches. Mind you, Mitt is earnest after a fashion, the way a telephone answering machine sounds earnest and helpful.
If by some miracle Romney is elected President, I predict the USA will have serious buyers remorse within six months of his inauguration. "I'll SAY anything you want as long as you vote for me" is always a bad presidential bargain that the nation lives to regret.
That my friends is all Mitt Romney has on offer.