The Inevitable New Hampshire Post Mortem

I was going to spend Tuesday watching the New Hampshire primary coverage, but an emergency in our tenant’s apartment required the evening be spent at Lowe buying tile, grout, faucets and drains.

When I finally did get home, I’d found to my surprise that I had spent the evening in a more interesting manner than that afforded by the coverage.

I intended to write about New Hampshire last night, but more important things intervened. In this case, four hour drinking beer at the Waterfront Alehouse talking about a race that actually mattered:

Fidler v Storobin.

Mitt Romney had about as good a night as he could have gotten, basically eliminating the threat to his left, and not eliminating any of the multitude to his right. 

Back in 72, Ed Muskie’s 46%  first place finish in New Hampshire (earned on March 7!) was considered a loss, but it’s hard to consider Mitt Romney’s 39% as anything but landslide, given that the next two candidates combined, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, neither of whom is remotely plausible as this year’s GOP nominee, barely equaled his vote.

This was probably the last we see of Jon Huntsman, who needed to make enough of a mark in the Granite State to raise enough money and notice to be relevant elsewhere.

If he couldn’t make it there, he can’t make it anywhere.

This inures mostly to the benefit of Mitt Romney, who now is the undisputed candidate of the sane moderate and practical wing of the Party (as it is defined in its frightening 2012 manifestation and infestation).

To the extent it doesn’t inure to Romney’s benefit, it inures to Ron Paul’s, which in the end is pretty much the same thing.

Huntsman was fighting Paul for independents and other crossover votes, including the stray anti-war leftists, in states where such people can vote. Eliminating Huntsman as a real candidate only makes Paul stronger, and Paul as the last rival standing is exactly what Mitt Romney wants. 

The there is the matter of the elusive beast known as “The Great Right Hope” (hereinafter GRH).

The only real remaining contenders for the exalted but seemingly mythical position of GRH , Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, trailed in fourth and fifth places, separated by a distance of 73 votes.

New Hampshire may be one of the few states where the GRH vote (add in Rick Perry, and it was barely over a fifth of the total) is lower than Romney’s.

For now.

But the failure of either Santorum to clinch out Gingrich, or for Gingrich to score a convincing comeback, leaves both in limbo (and more importantly, in the race).

After Iowa, it looked to many like Gingrich’s lingering about might actually help Santorum, allowing Rick to play the good rightie cop, while Newt self-destructed taking down Romney in a suicide bombing.

But with no time to build momentum, a contest on turf without a formidable representation of his natural base, and Gingrich possessed of more resources and (dare I say it) far more gravitas, it was not to be for Santorum.

Gingrich may talk about a unified right wing effort against Romney, but he means unified behind himself.

And with both Santorum and Gingrich still standing, and with  Rick Perry drawing his Alamo line in South Carolina, the chances for right unity anytime soon look nil.

Gingrich’s Super PAC may very well hurt Romney badly, but the narrative it is creating won’t do him or Santorum much good as long as both he and Santorum are both in the race, and by the time that changes, it may be game, set and match, leaving only the remnants of a Bain Capital documentary to be rebroadcast by Democratic PACs in the fall.

In the end, Romney’s inevitability is largely a matter of tyranny.

First there is the tyranny of the Big Mo. The more Romney is called inevitable, the truer it becomes, and unless one and only one plausible challenger emerges from the plausible right (as it is defined in its frightening 2012 manifestation and infestation), it will soon be over for everyone but Ron Paul, who will keep campaigning (in the manner of his buddy, Dennis Kucinich) long after everybody else has stopped caring.  

Then there is the tyranny of the calendar. In 1972, March 7th was basically when the race began (no one at that time understanding or caring about caucuses all that much).

Forty years, later, March 7th is probably the date by which the race will be over.