This is amazing, when you consider that: 1. McCain is the media’s own Frankenstein monster, created in 2000, and that the media brought his campaign back from the dead months ago, and kept it alive; 2. McCain is fundamentally hostile to the interests of Republican voters. He has waged a long, lonely battle on behalf of media control of elections (aka "campaign finance reform"), and on behalf of the abolition of America through open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants (aka "comprehensive immigration reform"); and 3. New Hampshire voters are supposedly very hostile towards amnesty and open borders.
The biggest loser in New Hampshire was Mitt Romney, who plowed millions of dollars of his own money into a massive ad campaign, gave a dominant performance—in my opinion, and that of the focus group interviewed by pollster Frank Luntz—in the Fox News GOP debate on Saturday, and emphasized not giving an amnesty to illegal immigrants. If Romney cannot win the January 15 primary in Michigan, where his late father George served as a liberal Republican governor, he is done.
Another huge loser was Rudy Giuliani. Fox did everything it could to help him. The network invited him to its Saturday GOP debate, and host Sean Hannity had him on his talk show immediately after the debate, while the same network did everything it could to destroy the candidacy of libertarian Texas Cong. Ron Paul, whom it refused to invite to the debate. With about 36 percent of the precincts counted, Giuliani and Paul both were at nine percent, though Giuliani had about 380 more votes than Paul. At present, with over 81 percent of precincts counted, Giuliani is holding steady at nine percent, with just under 1,800 more votes than Paul, who is now at eight percent. Considering that a few months ago, Giuliani had practically been coronated as the Republican standard-bearer, but only finished in sixth place in the Iowa caucuses, where he did not vigorously campaign, with four percent of the vote. But after campaigning full time in New Hampshire, with nothing to show for it, his campaign is now on life support.
But don’t count him out. This Republican whipped Al Sharpton and the New York media. And any man who can marry his own cousin (his first marriage), and later look a reporter who asked about that choice in the eye and say, "I didn’t know that," is clearly a liar of presidential proportions.
Mike Huckabee was badly hurt by voters who were hostile to the Evangelical religiosity that Republican Iowa caucus voters found so endearing. But with a third place showing (12 percent), he’s still alive, he won Iowa, and coming up are the Southern states, where his Evangelical Christian base is dominant. So, his candidacy is very much alive.
Depending on how you look at it, Ron Paul was a big loser or a big winner. He was a big loser, because this may have been his last chance to break into the top three vote-getters. But he was a big winner, in coming in merely one point behind Giuliani, despite Fox’ closing him out of the Saturday debate, and in exposing Fox News’ machinations and causing the state GOP to publicly denounce Fox, and on the eve of the debate, to withdraw from its partnership with Fox. If Paul continues his campaign, he will be running as much against Fox News as he will be against the other Republican candidates. The other networks should love that, and accordingly reward him with free publicity.
On the Democrat side, look for there to be a huge blacklash. At about 10:30 p.m., the AP called the race for Clinton. And at 10:34 p.m., Fox News’ Brit Hume said the race was also called "by another network," but would not say which network that was. Fox’ Michael Barone opined, "You’re slicing things fine, you’re slicing them Florida fine," when you call such a close race at this point.
At 10:48 p.m., Obama conceded defeat to Clinton, who leads him 39-37 percent. Earlier in the evening, she led him by four points.
Most whites would probably agree with the white, 40-something Obama volunteer, who was interviewed with his wife, who had also volunteered for the biracial Illinois senator: "It’s very close, if he loses. If he wins, he’s got the nomination."
Blacks are going to have a different attitude. The last polls before the primary all had Obama winning by at least 10 percent. Pollsters’ margin for error is plus or minus three percent. Thus, any result up to a six-point swing can be attributed to the margin of error; a ten-point swing cannot. When you take blacks’ conspiracist obsessions and add to them Clinton’s documented dirty tricks of using proxies to claim that Obama is or was a Moslem, and abused and/or sold hard drugs, you have an ugly situation.
Blacks are going to say that Hillary Clinton stole the primary through electoral fraud.
Not that such beliefs are going to have any effect whatsoever on the black primary vote elsewhere. Although black interviewees in the South have been careful to tell reporters that they were "undecided" as between Obama and Clinton, they were lying. They were always going to vote for the "black" candidate, just as they always do.
However, for once blacks’ knee-jerk conspiracy theories will be plausible. In the 2004 election, exit pollsters engaged in mischief, in trying to swing the election to Democrat John Kerry. A 10-point swing can only be explained via either rank incompetence by pollsters or polling or electoral skulduggery. And in Hillary Clinton, we know who we are dealing with.
Black rage could play a huge role down the road. If blacks decide to boycott the national election, the Republican nominee could stumble and stagger and back into victory, in spite of the Party’s national collapse under George Bush since 2004.
But with the very real possibility of a four-way race in 2008, this promises to be the most volatile election since 1968. And in a country that has been demographically fractured by legal and illegal immigration, such elections are going to increasingly be the rule.
How much of a role immigration continues to play will depend to a large degree on how long Ron Paul holds out. Forget about the Democrats, but if Mitt Romney loses in Michigan and then drops out, while Ron Paul remains in the race, Paul could benefit from some of Romney’s anti-amnesty vote.
