By Will Durst
Surely you’re longing to hear some scathingly humorous remarks concerning the New Hampshire primary. And it would be our honor to relate a few pithily amusing jibes about 2012’s primary Primary. Only, sorry. Not going to happen. Can’t be done. N.H. is so… over and done with. Day before yesterday. Such archaic news, you probably read about it in some ancient medium like a broadsheet gazette with sepia-toned daguerreotypes.
Oh sure, in the distant future, historians may well remark upon Willard Mitt Romney’s romp. And what a righteous romp it was. With the grimacing refugee from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Works avenging his 2008 defeat to John McCain by beating the rest of the field like a 4-year-old with a dime-store drum on Christmas morning to become the first Republican non-incumbent to sweep both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. And that plus 2 and a half bucks gets you a cup of coffee.
Alas, the political circus has long since moved on. Some of the camps were gone pre-already. Didn’t even bother to hang around Manchester for the actual count and amount, so intent were they to seek their second wind in the warmth of the southern primary action in South Carolina on the 21st and Florida 10 days later.
Hustling down, over their shoulders, the back of the pack halfheartedly tried to dismiss the former Massachusetts Governor’s triumph in the Granite State as a “Isn’t it Nice to See the Boy Next Door Doing so Well” kind of neighborly thing. But that proved a minor distraction and everyone knows the stakes for the final Anybody-But-Mitt tent need to pitched now. Today. If not sooner. Deep into the fertile soil of the Palmetto State.
This Southern-Fried Maginot Line is the last, best chance to jump on the Mittmeister and the whole B-Team is lacing up their steel-toed boots and pounding nails into their soles as we speak. South Carolina is where Bush derailed McCain in 2000; and to say the above-the-belt tactics were outnumbered by those below the belt is both accurate and lame.
To buttress his own personal Alamo, Newt Gingrich picked up $5 million from a single donor, to be funneled directly into ads to do to Romney what Romney did to him in Iowa. Cover your eyes, kids: this won’t be pretty. The guy who famously bragged, “I like to fire people,” Mr. Bain Capital, is about to bump up against an entire slate of candidates — not to mention a state — that feels the same way.
Not Newt himself, but Newt’s Super PAC, which has absolutely no connection to Newt. None. Whatsoever. At all. Totally separate entity. Super PAC. Such a guy thing. “My Super PAC is bigger than your Super PAC.” Super PAC envy. And the candidate with the biggest Super PAC gets the girl.
Rick Perry has joined Gingrich in running a series of grisly ads assailing the front-runner as a vulture capitalist; guaranteed to rile Willard up so bad his talons will be itching for more carrion. And no, I’m not talking about Rick Santorum. The ads are so vicious that if the Barack Obama Re-election Campaign possessed an ounce of common human decency, they’d chip in a couple bucks. Then again, maybe they are.
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