New Hampshire Primary's Significance: None

All I've heard since last night: How historic that Romney has won the first two states! One more win in South Carolina and he has the nomination in the bag!

I'm getting sick and tired of hearing that. There have been only one caucus and one primary so far, and they both mean absolutely nothing.

Let's start with Iowa. Typically a more moderate candidate wins in Iowa. Bush 41 beat Reagan in Iowa in 1980. Bob Dole won Iowa in 1996. Even in 2008, Huckabee was not a true conservative- Fred Thompson was the real conservative in that race. Really it should be no surprise that Romney won Iowa. The fact that Santorum came as close as he did to beating Romney (and there's evidence that suggests that Santorum actually did win) is pretty significant.

Now for last night's primary in New Hampshire. Again, Romney was expected to win there all along. New Hampshire is right next to Massachusetts, meaning that New Hampshire residents got Massachusetts broadcasting so they were exposed a lot to Romney. Romney had a house in New Hampshire. So really he's been campaigning there for years. There was no way Romney could lose. But if you think about it, given those reasons, the fact that he only won 39% of the vote is really not all that impressive.

Also consider that New Hampshire has an open primary- meaning that people of all political parties can vote. In a state that's becoming bluer and bluer each year, it should be no surprise that Romney came out on top with Paul and Huntsman following him. Paul and Huntsman won most of their votes from Independents and Democrats. All this means is that a bunch of liberals and moderates pushed forward Romney, Paul and Huntsman in New Hampshire. This is why an open primary is stupid- the people solely in the party should have their say, whether be it be a Democrat or Republican primary. You can thank the Governator for giving us an open primary here in CA.

So after a caucus where a moderate is normally elected, and an open primary in a blue state that is basically Romney's backyard, we're supposed to believe that Romney has this nomination in the bag already? How stupid does the media think we are?

First, what makes this primary season different from previous years is that the delegates are distributed proportionally based on the percentage of votes a candidate gets rather than winner-take-all. In other words, even though Romney narrowly edged out Santorum in Iowa they each got the same amount of delegates. This means that even if Romney wins South Carolina the race still isn't over, because if Santorum or Gingrich get second/third then they will still have enough delegates to hang around. In 1976, Reagan kept losing primary after primary until North Dakota, and then he began picking up steam and almost beat Gerald Ford. Ford was an incumbent and wasn't as weak as Romney.

Second, South Carolina is a solidly conservative state. Paul's crackpot foreign policy views and Huntsman's condescending liberalism won't resonate into any sort of momentum into South Carolina. Romney's flip flops on key social issues like abortion will come back to bite him in South Carolina. It is in this primary where I think the conservative alternative to Romney will emerge. This could be wishful thinking on my part, but I think Santorum will be that alternative.

I say this because lately Gingrich and Perry have been attacking Romney's career at Bain Capital. Perry has called him a "vulture capitalist" and Gingrich showing a film about Romney being "ruthlessly rich". This is really, really stupid of Gingrich and Perry to do. It's this kind of criticism I'd expect to hear from Obama or the Occupy Wall Street movement. It won't be received kindly by the conservative voters of South Carolina. As a result it will portray Romney as a capitalist.

Something is very screwy if Romney looks like a capitalist. In a previous blog post, I documented his tax-and-spend record as governor, but I forgot to mention that Romney was a supporter of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout, and to this day he still defends! There is nothing capitalist about TARP. In capitalism, when something fails, you let it fail. You don't use taxpayer money to keep it afloat. Not to mention that almost half of the TARP money can't even be accounted for now.

Is this seriously what the Republican party has come to? To the point where Romney is now looking like the capitalist in the race?

This is where Santorum comes in. Not only has Santorum been a consistent opponent of TARP, he hasn't involved in the Looney Left rhetoric that Gingrich and Perry have used to attack Romney. His strong conservative record and message I think will resonate more with South Carolina voters.

To those who say that Santorum has lost momentum, well this is what Ed Morrisey from Hot Air says:

Santorum’s struggle for double digits matters less because of the lack of affinity expected for Santorum in New Hampshire, and because his momentum in South Carolina among social conservatives and evangelicals probably won’t be slowed by a fourth- or fifth-place finish.

And what a lot of people forget is that before Iowa, Santorum was polling at like 1-2% in New Hampshire. The fact that he had 10% of the vote is actually quite remarkable when put into that context. So yes, Santorum still has momentum and I think he will put up a good fight against Romney.

That's why when Ron Paul last night told the rest of the GOP candidates to drop out of the race, all I had to say was: shut the hell up you schmuck.

The media or some crazy libertarian are not going to be the ones to tell us who to settle for. We, the American people, will decide who we settle for. If it's Romney, then so be it, he'd be a huge improvement over Obama. But we don't have to settle for him. That'll be for us to decide, not the media, and not that grumpy old man Ron Paul.