January 10, 2012
John Ellis: "The Mitt Romney campaign has now arrived at its Lee Atwater moment. Having won the New Hampshire primary decisively, Boston must now decide how much fire-power to focus on the South Carolina primary."
"If Lee Atwater were alive, he would answer with three words: 'All of it.'"
"Mitt Romney now has his opponents by the throat. When you have your opponent by the throat in presidential politics, you best finish the job. For Romney, that means imitating Atwater and going all in on South Carolina."
Based on exit polling, the TV networks declared Mitt Romney the winner of the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire.
Ron Paul is projected to finish a strong second and Jon Huntsman a more distant third.
Exit poll results: Romney 36%, Paul 23%, Huntsman 18%, Santorum 10%, Gingrich 10% and Perry 1%.
Nate Silver: "One reason that news outlets called the race for Mitt Romney so quickly may be that there is strong agreement between the actual results so far, the exit polls and the pre-election polls."
Many polls in New Hampshire close at 7 p.m. but some are open until 8 p.m.
CBS News will post exit poll results at 8 p.m.
The
Green Papers has "rules of the road" for counting delegates.
Follow the returns as they roll in at the
New York Times and
WMUR.
Google has a great map showing results.
Brian Stelter: "Network execs privately say they expect to be able to call NH for Romney at 8pm sharp. The race for 2nd will take longer."
Mark Blumenthal has an interesting piece on how the networks make the call.
In case you missed it: We're giving away
5 DVD copies of
Ides of March.
Bloomberg obtained a copy of a 28-minute film
set to be released tomorrow in South Carolina bankrolled by supporters of Newt Gingrich.
The film depicts Mitt Romney as a financier "more ruthless than Wall Street" and a son of privilege responsible for laying off thousands of workers. It attacks Romney's record as the CEO of Bain Capital and highlights the stories of workers who lost their jobs after the companies they worked for were acquired by Bain.
Says a laughing Romney: "Make a profit. That's what it's all about, right?"
Newt Gingrich "is out with his first
ad attacking Mitt Romney in South Carolina, and it's a doozy -- targeting the former Massachusetts governor's record on abortion rights," the
Washington Post reports.
"The former House speaker has repeatedly denounced negative ads, but in recent days he has declared his intention to draw 'contrast' with Romney. Whatever Gingrich wants to call it, this is a negative ad."
See more...
"After rejection in Iowa and surrender in New Hampshire, Republican Rick Perry has pinned his fading presidential hopes on a long-shot resurrection in deeply conservative South Carolina,"
Reuters reports.
Said Perry: "Give me a second look. Look at my record."
"But a comeback will be hard in South Carolina, which has picked the winner of the Republican presidential nomination each year since the primary began in 1980.
Polls show Perry, who once led the state by more than 20 points, in a distant fifth after a series of disastrous debate performances."
"Are you going to fire the baby?"
-- An activist in New Hampshire, quoted by
BuzzFeed, tweeking Mitt Romney as held a child while greeting voters.
Ted Nesi: "From 1966 to 1968, Rhode Island's then-governor, John Chafee, played a
pivotal role in marshaling support for the doomed presidential bid of
his fellow liberal Republican, Gov. George Romney of Michigan. The very
different roads their sons traveled subsequently are a reminder of the
GOP's transformation in the years since."
The Republican National Committee
argued in federal court today to allow corporate campaign donations to candidates for federal offices.
Rick Hasen: "Especially if Romney is the nominee, expect this to be rolled into Romney's '
corporations are people, my friend' line, the Bain Capital stuff, and the recent '
I like to fire people gaffe,' with Occupy undertones, for Democrats (or their super PAC surrogates) to make an anti-corporate, Populist message for Obama's reelection."
In the mail:
FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal by James Simon.
A dramatic story of the most significant struggle between the executive and judiciary branches in the 20th-century -- and one with critical implications for this year's battle over President Obama's health care law.
Former South Carolina Gov. Jim Edwards (R) tells
Massimo Calabresi that he's not endorsing Mitt Romney this year -- even though in 2008 he "devoted four months of his life to be the de facto co-chair of Mitt Romney's campaign in the state, raising money and organizing supporters statewide."
This time, he is considering backing Rick Santorum. But Edwards' defection "says less about Rick Santorum's chances in South Carolina, where the Iowa upstart has spent been mostly absent in recent days and where his Catholicism won't help him with evangelicals, than it does about the challenge Romney will face in the next 11 days as he tries to clinch the GOP nomination by the end of January."
John Heilemann says that if Mitt Romney "finishes with less than 31 percent and/or a mere single-digit win, it will be interpreted as a clear disappointment, maybe even as a kind of defeat. Any result that falls in between those poles will be read more ambiguously, though my sense of the over-under at this point is a double-digit win with 36 percent -- a five-point improvement on 2008."
John Cassidy: "For his campaign to take a real hit, I think his share of the vote would have to fall well below thirty-five per cent, and his lead would have to fall to ten points, or less. Even then, that might not be too big a problem if Paul were to be the second place finisher -- Paul isn't a serious threat for the nomination. What would be truly calamitous for Romney would be for his vote share to drop below thirty per cent and for Huntsman to come in second place, with, say, twenty one per cent of the vote."
John Avlon: "So what's the bar of success Team Romney needs to clear? I'd say 32% -- his share of the popular vote in 2008 when he came in second to John McCain... If Romney can't exceed his popular vote count from four years ago in New Hampshire, it will be seen as another sign of his weakness as a front-runner -- a failure to attract new supporters and build his base. Remember, 75% of the primary voters still seem to want someone else despite Romney's organizational edge."
WMUR-TV's
James Pindell breaks down the important communities in New Hampshire to watch as results come in tonight.
A new
We Ask America poll in South Carolina shows Mitt Romney leading the GOP presidential field with 26%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 21%, Rick Santorum at 13%, Ron Paul at 8%, Rick Perry at 5% and John Hunstman at 4%. Another 22% are still undecided.
Analysis: "As we've seen in Iowa and as others have measured throughout the nation, Romney is increasingly being viewed among the GOP as the one who will prevail. True, if there's a surprise in New Hampshire, shifts can quickly occur in South Carolina, so we'll revisit here soon. But for now, Romney is hoping that tonight will finally tip over that domino that starts a chain reaction to victory."
A new
Public Policy Polling survey finds Romney at 27%, Gingrich at 23%, Santorum at 18%, Ron Paul at 8%, Rick Perry at 7% and Jon
Huntsman at 4%.
We're giving away five DVD copies of
The Ides of March.
"An idealistic staffer for a newbie presidential candidate gets a crash
course on dirty politics during his stint on the campaign trail."
For a chance, please read on...
See more...
Ryan Lizza says former President George W. Bush is at fault for the exceptionally weak field of Republican presidential candidates.
"A successful Presidency can produce a new crop of future Presidential candidates for the party that controls the White House. The vice president and cabinet officials, as well as governors and senators elected over the course of the administration, are historically major sources for a party's next round of candidates. The Bush years had the opposite effect. It was unthinkable that his vice president would run for higher office and much of his cabinet left Washington tainted by the President's unpopularity. Moreover, Bush helped sink his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections, thus depleting the ranks of potential Republican candidates for 2012."
New Hampshire voters head to the polls until 8 p.m. ET to pick their candidates for president.
Three things to watch:
1. Will Mitt Romney get more than the 32% of the vote he won four years ago? The expectations game may hinge on that number.
2. Who finishes second? If the polls are correct, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman are waging a close fight for runner up.
3. Will a fifth place finish end either Newt Gingrich's or Rick Santorum's campaign?
First Read: "The New Hampshire primary is a 'semi-open' primary, meaning that voters without a declared party can vote in either primary, but registered Democrats and Republicans must vote in their own party's contest. Independents account for about 40% of New Hampshire voters, and due to the fact that there is essentially no real contest on the Democrats' side, independents could play a large role in the Republican primary."
Jon Stewart points out that Mitt Romney is the embodiment of Republican principles -- free markets and unfettered capitalism -- but now his Republican rivals think that's unfair.
See more...
A new
Gallup poll finds Mitt Romney is the now the only candidate that a majority of conservative and moderate/liberal Republicans nationwide see as an "acceptable" GOP nominee for president.
More interesting is that conservative Republicans are more likely to say Romney would be an acceptable nominee than either Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.
"The 2012 election will be the most important in the history of our health care system because it will determine whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is implemented or repealed. The consequences for Americans and their health care will be huge," argues Dr. David Blumenthal in the
New England Journal of Medicine.
TPM notes that "if Republicans fail to capture the presidency this time around, repealing some or all of the law becomes far more difficult later, even if the GOP sweeps Congress in 2012 and wins the White House in 2016 with equal determination to squash it."
"An important caveat is that as long as there are 41 Democratic senators to mount a filibuster, total repeal won't be easy. But if Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress (a real possibility come 2013), they could unravel the law by deliberately botching its implementation and potentially muscling through repeal of its less popular provisions -- like the individual mandate -- before the more popular ones take effect.
A new
CBS News poll finds that 58% of Republican primary voters want more presidential choices, while just 37% say they are satisfied with the current field. The percentage of Republican primary voters that wants more choices has increased 12 points since October.
A lawyer for a consulting firm founded by Newt Gingrich "said he was barring the release of a contract between the Republican presidential candidate and Freddie Mac,"
Bloomberg reports.
"Freddie Mac officials said last week that Gingrich was '
welcome' to release the contract, under which his consulting firm was paid at least $1.6 million over eight years for his services."
Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) will announce today he is planning to retire at the end of his current term, the
Redding Record Searchlight reports.
January 09, 2012
A new
SurveyUSA poll in Florida shows very similar results to this morning's
Quinnipiac poll:
Mitt Romney leads with 36%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 25%, Rick Santorum at 17% and Ron Paul at 7%.
A new
American Research Group poll in New Hampshire finds Mitt Romney way ahead of the GOP presidential field with 37%, followed by Jon Huntsman at 18%, Ron Paul at 17%, Rick Santorum at 11%, Newt Gingrich at 10% and Rick Perry at 1%.
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