The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

New Hampshire

The Hall Monitor of American Politics

Remember the kid in high school that had some meaningless position but thought it made them a power broker? The hall monitor, the office workers, the equipment manager. There are similar people in the adult world, small time functionaries that use a little sphere of influence to try to make other people as miserable as they are: clerks at the drivers license renewal counter, IRS employees, mall security guards. That is what New Hampshire is like: A tiny, relatively irrelevant state that sneers at the rest of the country and looks down on everyone outside of New England, especially Midwesterners. Once every four years New Hampshire crawls out of obscurity and we are treated to their demands that candidates spend time in their state, genuflecting to the altar of the "First in the Nation Primary". New Hampshire has a whopping 24 GOP delegates, compared to 47 in South Carolina, 40 in Iowa and 60 in Michigan. All New Hampshire brings to the table is being first, and because of that every candidate is forced to spend time in state that has no real bearing on the direction of the rest of the country.

Check out this quote I came across in the Manchester Union-Leader:

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS for supporters of Mitt Romney: A man has survived a 47-story fall from a New York skyscraper. So anything is possible.

Now the bad news: Judd Gregg was right. New Hampshire still picks Presidents.

Weeks before the Iowa caucuses this past Thursday night clobbered Romney and his multi-million-dollar campaign, his man, Gregg, had dismissed them as meaningless.

Taking a line first used by Gov. John Sununu, Gregg said, "Iowa picks corn. New Hampshire picks Presidents."

What could be worse than picking corn! We lived in New Hampshire for several years, and one thing became clear: there are few people in this world who are more arrogant with less cause than New Hampsherites. Huckabee is not going to do well in New Hampshire, a state full of beautiful old churches, churches that are empty on Sundays. It was fun during the election cycle, we had a ton of candidate come through. I met Dan Quayle and Bill Bradley, and a bunch of candidates were in our town parade. But there is not a constitutional right for New Hampshire to be first and you would be hard pressed to find a state less in tune with the rest of the country.