COMMENTARY | The New Hampshire Republican primary took place and it Mitt Romney took the state as expected. Romney was the favorite going in, and he didn’t disappoint by receiving an estimated 37 percent of the vote. Ron Paul came in a somewhat surprising second place with 27 percent and Huntsman finished in third with 17 percent. Rick Santorum, the candidate that came only eight votes short of Romney in the Iowa race, is battling Newt Gingrich for fourth place with somewhere around 10 percent of the votes. Rick Perry, the one-time front runner during the Iowa caucus, finished in a disappointing sixth place. Perry didn’t invest much money in New Hampshire, so don’t expect him to drop out until after Florida. Huntsman vows to continue in the race, but look for him to drop out soon. He invested heavily in New Hampshire, and he still could not even beat out Ron Paul for second.
Mitt Romney doesn’t exactly get a huge boost out of this race. This was his state to lose, so there isn’t much gained for Mitt Romney by winning. He is a former governor from neighboring Massachusetts, so he has name recognition and popularity in the region. The mantra from the talking heads on television is that Romney did something that has never been done before by winning both Iowa and New Hampshire. Before everyone gets too excited about Romney, think about another winning candidate in the past. Mitt Romney spent four years and millions of dollars campaigning in Iowa and was also a former governor from a New England state. Let’s look at the most recent Republican nominees: McCain, Bush, Dole, Bush, Reagan, Ford, Nixon; nope, not one of them was a governor from a New England state. So what does this win mean for Mitt Romney? It means that he is off to a good start by winning two Northern States. He still has to show us if he can win in the much more conservative south.
South Carolina is next up so we will see what happens there. Can Ron Paul finish strong? Probably not, since he is more of a libertarian that isn’t likely to rally much more than his 20-30 percent of the Republican electorate. I look for Gingrich, Santorum, or Perry to take over the conservative wing of the Republican Party in this nomination process. The candidate that emerges among those three, most likely Rick Santorum, will face off against Mitt Romney. Florida is that state that should really shake up the field and force Gingrich and Perry to drop out if Rick Santorum emerges as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.
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