BETTER YOUR BRAIN

Source: heypoliscigirl

Romney,Paul, Huntsman. Welp.

Welp, there it goes. The first primary is approx. 91% over and now we pretty much just have to sit back and wait for Super Tuesday.

Surprising no one, Romney came in first by a pretty large margin, with more votes than Paul and Huntsman, who came in second and third respectively, combined. Romney upped his numbers from 2008 pretty significantly, pulling in about 40% of the vote this time. Congrats, you campaigned for 5 years and won yourself a couple of percentage points (also probably the GOP nomination).

Paul brought in 23% of the vote. In a state that’s pretty damn proud of their “Live Free or Die” motto, the fact that the self-styled champion of liberty did well is no major change up. Again, Paul isn’t going to win the nomination and I doubt he’ll win a VP bid but he seems to be in the campaign for the long-haul, at least for a few more months. If enough others drop out, he has the potential to detract from Romney pretty heavily if he leans on his crutch as the anti-establishment option. He’ll keep things interesting if nothing else.

Huntsman. I was hoping he could slide into 2nd place, but it was not to be. Although earlier polls showed him being within a few points of Paul, even beating him in some, the primary results speak otherwise. He came in at around 17%, which while respectable is not the sort of results he needed or should have received given that he’s run a campaign largely focused on New Hampshire. He has no real chance at winning in South Carolina in a few days, and I suspect his run is coming to an end.

(I hate that he isn’t winning, and it makes me resent the Republican party even more that they don’t recognize what a great candidate they have right in front of them. I genuinely feel that Huntsman is not only a good candidate for the general election but that he’s a good man. I think he would have given Obama a run for his money and proved to the nation that the GOP is capable of getting behind a non-fringe candidate. He would have pulled in a lot of independents and disenfranchised democrats, making up for some votes he would have inevitably lost from his own party because he worked under O as ambassador. He’s knowledgeable, nice, and I think has the potential to be a very strong, capable leader if given the opportunity. He did great things in Utah and I have no reason to think he couldn’t send the country in the same direction. Unfortunately, his lack of presence in earlier debates and unwillingness to dip into his (hella extensive) personal accounts to fund his campaign are driving the final nails into his coffin. At the same time that I realize it’s a poor choice politically for him to not fund his own campaign extensively or plunge into the partisan, nasty fray, it’s also I like him so much. He believes in democracy, and you can tell he would rather lose honestly than self-promote to win empty votes. He has the potential to unite the country and it’s a damn shame his run for POTUS is coming to an end so soon.)

Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry are fighting it out for 4th. Perry might stick around for the Southern primaries, but if I were him I would drop out now. He has like 1% of the vote at this point, he’s just wasting money. Gingrich’s numbers aren’t stellar, but neither did he expect them to be. He’s polling really well in South Carolina and some other Southern states so I suspect he’ll stick around for a while longer as well. Santorum isn’t doing well outside of the midwest, as I predicted. His momentum took him about as far as the Iowa border and promptly puttered out. He might stick around in hopes of a VP bid since a few candidates have indicated they would choose him but I doubt he’ll be in the race much longer.

back to it!

• Perry, if Obama was kowtowing to his leftist liberal base I would be a lot less keen on Huntsman. Also, Perry says ‘literally’ like Chris on Parks and Rec.
• Gingrich makes a walk around point about energy independence, maybe?
• Sanctions don’t always lead up to war Paul.
• Santorum is really annoying me right now. Don’t criticize Obama for going into Libya and then criticize him for standing by when Iran had protests and their government was killing the protestors. You either want him to spur revolutions or you don’t.
• We DO encourage the private sector Romney, what do you think these tax cuts are for? ooo and here comes why Obama is a socialist this is just super. aces, you.
• I feel like Gingrich is just pulling numbers out of his ass for his infrastructure plan, no research involved.
• Tax reform, go Huntsman go. I’d love some specifics though.
• Did they seriously just ask why don’t we just not have taxes? Why moderators, why the fuck would you do that?
• No Mitt. We are not a step away from an unfree economy. Stop.
• I like it when the contestants slip up and call each other by their first names and then look around like they’ve sinned.
• YEAH FUCK THE BAILOUTS let’s go Ron Paul tell em how it is 
• OOPS freudian slip Perry “Companies—countries that are hostile to America.”
• Not feeling Hunstman on this “manufacturing renaissance” (took me 4 times to spell that word). We have too many labor laws and too high of a standard of living to really compete internationally in manufacturing. 
• I’m not crazy about Perry making a talking point out of the Declaration of Independence when he supports policies that keep people from pursuing their own happiness unapologetically. 
• Gingrich: “A little bit harsh on Obama who in his efforts to create a radical Socialist European model is sincere…” Funny but no, try again.
• I think they’ve all forgotten that Reagan raised taxes and spent with the best of them.
• “THERE ARE NO CLASSES IN AMERICA” SANTORUM WHAT IS YOUR ISSUE? Ignoring an issues does NOT make it go away. way to disenfranchise millions.
• It amazes me that Romney is 60 years old. He’s killed a unicorn and is slowly drinking it’s blood, that’s the only possible solution. The man looks so good for someone of his age.
• Huntsman needs to hammer his advantages better, he’s letting Romney turn China against him a little bit. 
• It’s nice how the debate ends with FOOBAW FOOBAW FOOBAW FAMILY FOOBAW NOPE MY KIDS ARE IN THE NAVY now you all feel bad about your answers. 

Real life got in the way of my political fixation last night (except not really because all I talked about in the car with my pal Philip was the primary) so I didn’t watch the debate. I’m remedying that now and you’ll reap the fruit of my labor.

• I’m so glad to not see Bachmann up on stage anymore.
• 200,000 new jobs last month, what up. Romney is so so so typical when they ask him about positive things that have happened in the country. “Yes, that’s great, but Obama didn’t do it. Here’s why he gets no credit.”
• Santorum…Iran is not the biggest problem we face. I’ll buy that business experience doesn’t add up to presidential leadership though, nice little sound byte. 
• Gingrich would be the man to call others out for corruption, he has enough experience with it to know what it looks like by now.
• I always come away from these thinking if nothing else, Romney is a nice guy who just sort of bumbled his way into this and decided if he was going to do it, he was going to be good at it.
• JON HUNTSMAN I LOVE YOU, you precious precious man. Finally bringing the debate back to the real issue: jobs and the economy.
• I like how hard the moderators are trying to pit the candidates against each other.
• Someone teach Ron Paul how to speak into the microphone, gotta keep him calling everyone else out tonight.
• The debate is turning into Paul vs everyone which gives it an interesting angle. Paul has no problem calling someone out and holding his ground, grumpy old man that he is.
• “To say you’re a conservative is a stretch but you’ve convinced a lot of people of it.” AHAHAHAHHA YOU GO RON PAUL, way to verbally bitch slap Santorum.
• Hi I’m Rick Santorum and I have a Spendometor therefore I’m a real conservative.
• Perry makes a pretty legit point, Americans are looking for an outsider who isn’t corrupted by the process. 
• Well Santorum got one thing right, debt-ceiling increases have been regular for 200 years.
• “We have a serious trust deficit in this nation. The American people no longer trust our institutions of power and they no longer trust our elected officials…..Everybody knows congress needs term limits.” hit the nail on the head, Hunstman. 
• Oh my god Mitt Romney we get it Obama has never done anything or lived anywhere or accomplished anything past the point he was born we understand you can stop now. I want to hear about what YOU will do, not what he hasn’t done. 
• Gingrich the Chickenhawk…”Dr. Paul makes a lot of comments, it’s part of his style.” Isn’t it part of everyones…? I liked Gingrich’s answer to veterans affairs well enough, I’m glad it’s being talked about at all.
• And again Dr. Paul lays it down: ”I’m trying to stop the wars, but at least I went when they called me up.” “The Constitution has rules and I don’t like it when we send our kids off to fight these wars when those individuals didn’t go themselves and then come up and when they’re asked they say “Oh, I don’t think one person could have made a difference.” I have a pet peeve, that annoys me a great deal, because when I see these young men coming back my heart weeps for them.” I didn’t get any sense of false piety here. After Gingrich says he was married with a child and therefore couldn’t serve, Paul rebuts ”When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids and I went.”
• Paul drops the ball on his racist newsletters but picks it up and throws a damn touchdown with his rant about how racist the criminal justice system is. “How many times have you seen a rich white person get the electric chair?” Drug laws are being unfairly enforced, glad to see Paul bring it up. I’ve said this before but I’ll repeat: I really don’t think he’s going to get the nomination, and I don’t think he honestly thinks he will either so I think he’s using his temporary momentum to throw issues that he cares about into the forefront.
• Romney surprised me with his “I can’t imagine a state banning contraception…I can’t imagine a situation in which a state would want to do so.” “Contraception: it’s working just fine! Leave it alone!”
• Romney tried real hard to avoid Roe vs Wade but they got him. He would overturn. Typical and wrong.
• Ooooo ‘penumbra’ look at you Santorum, getting fancy
• Hunstman is not coming out like I wish he would for gay rights but neither is he being malicious. “I don’t feel like my marriage is threatened in any way by civil unions.”
• They all need to hop off of Murdoch’s dick, the media doesn’t have a liberal bias. Chill bros.
• hahahah Ron Paul “Please don’t interrupt me.” He’s cute.
• I think I’ve started to just tune Rick Perry out by accident. All I caught was some crap about a war on religion so I don’t feel like I missed much.
• Huntsman is about done with Afghanistan, “I don’t want to be nation building in SW Asia.” 
• Huntsman is schooling the hell out of the rest of them on foreign policy all the way around the globe, he seems to be the only one who really knows how to be a Commander In Chief 
• Gingrich makes a fair point in that “Afghanistan is a tiny piece of a huge mess that is very dangerous…..There is a region wide crisis that we have been mismanaging.”  I also agree with what he was saying about it not being a military problem, primarily. After that though, he loses me. 

I’m at the half way point in the debate so here is the first half of my NH reactions.