Ron Paul Wouldn’t Support Any Other Republican
BY STEVE KORNACKI
After playing his usual punching bag role in last night’s Republican debate, Ron Paul found himself surrounded by his most devoted and fervent friends on Sunday afternoon.
The occasion was Paul’s keynote address at the annual convention of the Free State Project, a group of libertarians who are essentially trying to colonize New Hampshire.MORE …
Obama Campaign Says Hillary Tries to ‘Rewrite History’ on Iraq War
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton emails a statement on Hillary Clinton’s Iraq comment in Nashua: “Hillary Clinton may try to rewrite history, but it’s hard to believe she didn’t know what would happen after she voted for a resolution with the title ‘A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.’ MORE …
The Fellowship: Viggo Stand With Dennis Kucinich
BY CHOIRE SICHA
The actor Viggo Mortensen was so ticked off by the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from last night’s debates that he got on the red eye to New Hampshire. He stood on a table with the Democratic candidate in the storefront headquarters in Concord, N.H., this afternoon, and spoke softly about the debates. "You have four people up there, no disrespect to any of them, who are cherrypicking from what Dennis is talking about." MORE …
Hillary Says She Wouldn’t Have Gone to War in Iraq If She Were President
BY JASON HOROWITZ
A young girl in the crowd at a Nashua high school just asked Hillary Clinton how she knows she would not have gone to war in Iraq like President Bush if she were president. Clinton said this:
“After 9/11, I would never have taken us to war in Iraq."MORE …
Rudy Watch: Setting a Bar (High) at Ron Paul
BY JASON HOROWITZ
The twenty-odd reporters waiting for Rudy Giuliani in a Radisson hotel room on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border are talking Ron Paul. One reporter has a bet going that Paul will get more than 11 percent in the primary. Nobody present is willing to take the other side of that bet. MORE …
Clinton Supporter Likes Her Answers, Dislikes Her Negativity
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Pat Aurenz, a 45-year-old undecided voter from Nashua, didn’t have a problem with Hillary Clinton saying she would not have gone to war in Iraq as president. “She voted to go to war based on information that was a bunch of lies,” said Aurenz, who sat in the bleachers at a Hillary event in Nashua with her husband (an Obama supporter) and daughter. MORE …
Clinton: Change "You Can Count On"
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Last night’s debate was not a fluke.
Hillary Clinton is wagering the success of her campaign in New Hampshire, and possibly her entire candidacy, on her ability to destroy the reputations of Barack Obama and John Edwards as change-makers.
After building them up as making a “tremendous contribution to this campaign” and offering “service to our country,” in a Nashua high school just now, she fervently went about the business of knocking them down.MORE …
Lots of Lifetime Women Undecided, With Lots of Reservations About the Female Candidate
BY CHOIRE SICHA
What will happen on primary day if 50 percent of the women voters of New Hampshire are still undecided this weekend?
On Saturday morning, Lifetime Television convened a meeting of local women. At the end of a program of speakers that included Martha Burk (of Augusta National Golf Club protests fame), who is currently serving as Bill Richardson’s senior adviser for women’s issues, the audience took part in a straw poll. MORE …
Axelrod Mocks ‘Sad’ Clinton Attacks
BY JASON HOROWITZ
After last night’s debate, Barack Obama’s chief adviser David Axelrod assumed the posture of a disappointed observer who was hurt by the Clintons’ decision to go negative.
“They are trying to create doubts. It’s classic strategy,” he said, adding, “I thought one of the telling things Senator Clinton said tonight was let’s not give people ‘false hope.’ I think that’s a sad thing to say.” MORE …
Elizabeth Edwards Says John Did It For John
BY JASON HOROWITZ
It certainly seemed last night that John Edwards had thrown his lot in with Barack Obama last night in his attempt to get Hillary Clinton out of the race as soon as possible, defending the Illinois senator fiercely against her criticisms.
But Elizabeth Edwards said that her husband did it, Drago-like, for himself. MORE …
Trippi on Losing It
BY JASON HOROWITZ
The best line of the night has to go to Joe Trippi, the Edwards advisor who used to work for Howard Dean.
When asked if Hillary Clitnon’s venting about change had reached an anger level approximate to the Dean scream, he said this:
“I think tonight, change won, and the status quo lost it.” MORE …
Penn Says What He Thinks the Press Won’t
BY JASON HOROWITZ
The enormous cluster of reporters surrounding Mark Penn dispelled any question as to whether last night’s debate was all about Hillary Clinton. It was.
With four Clinton spinners on the spin room floor (Penn, media consultant Mandy Grunwald, and spokesmen Jay Carson and Phil Singer) the Clinton campaign was clearly imbued with what Barack Obama might call “the fierce urgency of now.”
Here’s what Penn was saying, essentially continuing Clinton’s assault on her opponents’ change credentials. MORE …
Obama’s Rose Garden Debate
BY STEVE KORNACKI
This was not a particularly good deba
te for Barack Obama. Of course, the same was said after many of the previous debates, and it didn’t stop him from scoring a clear Iowa victory.
Throughout most of tonight’s 90-minute affair, Obama faded into the background while Hillary Clinton confidently asserted herself with a series of specific policy riffs that buttressed her campaign’s themes of preparation and experience. MORE …
Edwards Sides With Obama, Clinton Gets Really Mad
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Hillary Clinton finally got angry.
Less than a week after losing her front-runner status with a crushing loss in the Iowa caucuses, she found herself fighting for her political life on the stage of Saint Anselm College.
She went directly after Barack Obama, attacking him for what she said were inconsistent positions on health care and funding for the war in Iraq, and arguing that he had not received sufficient vetting. MORE …
Debate Summary: McCain Doesn’t Falter, Romney Brutalized
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Twenty years ago, Bob Dole slipped up in a debate on the Saturday night before the New Hampshire primary — he refused to sign a "no new taxes" pledge—and saw the momentum from his Iowa triumph promptly fizzle out, handing a campaign-saving come-from-behind victory to George H.W. Bush.
Mitt Romney, whose once overwhelming New Hampshire support is collapsing in the wake of his poor Iowa showing, entered tonight’s debate in dire need of a similar stumble by John McCain, whose resurgent candidacy could extinguish Romney’s with a victory in three nights.
He didn’t get it. MORE …
Rudy Aims Low, Locals Fret
BY JASON HOROWITZ
This morning, Rudy Giuliani addressed a conference of robotics enthusiasts at a competition called “For Inspiration & Recognition of Science and Technology.” ("A unique varsity sport of the mind,” reads the competition literature. “Designing and building a robot is a fascination real-world professional experience.”)
While Giuliani did receive a warm response, the attendees were ultimately there to see robots fight.
An hour or so later, Giuliani gave a speech at a packed house in Litchfield. But it was a house. MORE …
Don’t Arrive Late for a John McCain Event
BY STEVE KORNACKI
John McCain was left for dead six months ago. Things have changed just a little.
The Town Hall in Peterborough, the picturesque village that inspired Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town," fits 640 people. But by 11:45 on Saturday morning, 15 minutes before McCain’s only scheduled event for the day was to start, there were more than 800 people packed inside—and the angry fire marshal was at the front doors, shouting away more than a hundred more local residents and media members, a throng that spilled into the narrow downtown street. MORE …
Rudy Says He’s Going to Do Well (Enough) in New Hampshire
BY JASON HOROWITZ
TI managed to grab Rudy Giuliani as he left a robotics and technology competition at the Southern New Hampshire University this morning in Manchester (he rode in on a Segway) and asked him about Hillary Clinton seeming to embrace the same February 5 strategy that he has been pursuing for months. Giuliani gave a short chuckle and said the strategies were not the same. He described his own campaign’s thinking as follows: “It’s no more complicated than this. There are 28 primaries left, whoever wins 15 or 20 of them is going to be the candidate. You cannot do it with one primary, the question is, we believe, you have to be competitive in many states and that is the strategy that we have followed." MORE …
Bill Clinton and the Obama-Vetting Argument
BY STEVE KORNACKI
Are the Clintons really in any position to lecture Democratic voters about how irresponsible of them it would be to nominate Barack Obama?
For months, that’s the game they’ve been playing—warning, in ways subtle and overt, that Obama is a novice candidate who will be mercilessly chewed up by the big, bad Republicans. MORE …
O-blammo!
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Bill Richardson gave his speech.
"The national media has kinda put the Iraq war aside," he said at the New Hampshire State Democratic Party Dinner. (For the record, he’d like to have the troops home in a year.)
By the time he was wrapping up, railing about how the primary should be settled by the voters, not by the "national media," hundreds of Obama supporters had begun gathering near the stage, chanting and yelling. MORE …
McCain Might Not Even Need Obama’s Independents
BY STEVE KORNACKI
There is a strain of conventional wisdom that holds that Barack Obama’s resounding win in Iowa is bad news for John McCain.
The reason: McCain and Obama both enjoy strong support among New Hampshire’s crucial bloc of independent voters. And with Obama ascendant after his resounding Iowa win, independents are now more likely to participate in the Democratic primary, potentially depriving McCain of thousands of votes that would otherwise be his. MORE …
This Is the Republican Front-Runner
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Mike Huckabee and his friend Chuck Norris held a rally in the gymnasium of New England College in Henniker, N.H., a little after 4 p.m. today.
“Do you really think they had this much fun at Hillary’s rally?” Huckabee said, after playing a few songs on the bass guitar with a local band.
He introduced Chuck Norris. MORE …
McAuliffe Makes the Feb. 5 Argument
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Terry McAuliffe, one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest fund-raisers and the former chair of the D.N.C., just repeated his belief, and the campaign’s new talking point, that the nominating process will be decided on Feb. 5.
“I think this thing will finally be over on Feb 5,” he said on a conference call, referring to Super Duper Tuesday. “One huge advantage we have at the Clinton campaign is that from day one we were going to run a national campaign.”
Here’s how McAuliffe argued that same point on the Clinton plane last night. MORE …
The Obama’s Not Ready Tour Begins
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Hillary Clinton didn’t waste any time trying to bring Barack Obama back down to
earth after his convincing victory in Iowa’s caucus yesterday.
In her first New Hampshire campaign in a Nashua hangar, Clinton called on the voters to vet her opponents’ records and judge whether they are really ready to be president.
“There has been a lot static in the air and a lot of unanswered questions about all of us as candidates,” she said. “I want to know from all of you, those who are supporting me, those who are undecided and those who at this moment and time think they are supporting another candidate, what do you want to know about us.” MORE …
The Full Hillary
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Given the rarity of Hillary Clinton giving a formal press conference, it seems worth posting a full transcript of her comments from earlier today at the Gala café in Manchester. Highlights include: her essentially calling Iowa an undemocratic backwater that discriminates against potential Hillary voters; her suggesting that reporters take a closer, more skeptical look at Barack Obama. MORE …
The Union Leader Hits Romney Again (and Again and Again)
BY STEVE KORNACKI
This morning’s edition of the Union Leader contains a reminder of why the endorsement of New Hampshire’s largest (and most conservative) newspaper is so coveted by Republicans: Two separate editorials (technically, one is a note from publisher Joseph McQuaid) touting McCain and disparaging Mitt Romney, his chief rival in the state. MORE …
Pete King, Optimist
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Representative Peter King of Long Island was one of the attendees at the Giuliani event in Litchfield this afternoon, where the former mayor received a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair.
As the Congressman was leaving, I asked him Rudy had any shot of winning New Hampshire. MORE …
Madeleine Stowe Thinks John Edwards is in the Driver’s Seat
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Mike Lockable may have the Chuck Norris voter all locked up—but Madeleine Stowe is continuing her Iowa push for John Edwards here in New Hampshire. I talked to the actress (Twelve Monkies! Last of the Mohicans!MORE …
Early Post-Iowa Poll in N.H.: McCain Up, Obama Way Up
BY STEVE KORNACKI
Rasmussen has the first post Iowa New Hampshire poll. Some very intersting findings:MORE …
Elizabeth Kucinich on Why It’s Not Working Out
BY CHOIRE SICHA
I caught up with the tall red-haired Elizabeth Kucinich this morning downtown Manchester. "It was very interesting last night," she said of the New Hampshire Democratic dinner, at which her husband Dennis spoke. "So you saw: standing ovation, whooping, cheering…. Lots of people came up, saying we love you, you’re right about everything. And then I see them wearing pins for other candidates. And I said, not being a shy, retiring wife, ‘Maybe we can exchange your pin for a Kucinich pin?’"
The obstacle to the Kucinich campaign, as she sees it, is the obsession with "electability."MORE …
Shea-Porter Says Obama Has Grassroots and the Other Thing, Too
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Four years ago, the New Hampshire State Democratic dinner had been packed for Howard Dean. Is that what happened last night for Barack Obama? One young woman at this year’s dinner said it was "all Facebook"–the massive turnout of young Obama people was accomplished by poking and friending. MORE …
Mike Murphy: Hillary is Muskie, Bloomberg a Non-Starter
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Ran into Mike Murphy, the Republican polical consultant and talking head, at the Radisson in Manchester this morning. "President Clinton? Never gonna happen," he said. "She loses here, but she keeps trying. She turns into Ed Muskie in a pantssuit. There’s your money quote." MORE …
Bill O’Reilly’s Advance Team: A Young Red-Headed Girl
BY JOHN KOBLIN
PENACOOK, N.H.—A little after 10 this morning, Hillary Clinton hosted a rally at a high school gym here. She had an unexpected guest.
The first question in a Q. and A. session was from a young girl with red hair. Bill O’Reilly, she said, had asked her how quickly troops could leave Iraq, and wouldn’t the Senator have a better answer for him than she? MORE …
Meet the HuffPo Twins
BY JOHN KOBLIN
MANCHESTER, N.H., Jan. 4—A pair of 26-year-old twins, Matthew and Peter Slutsky, are freelancing for The Huffington Post. They make short films and they’re up from Washington to document campaign events and to produce what they described as "serious journalism." MORE …
The Revolutionaries: Paul’s New Hampshire Brigade
BY CHOIRE SICHA
They haunt the streets of Manchester and lurk outside Hillary Clinton rallies—so let’s meet the Ron Paul supporters! MORE …
N.Y. Surrogates on the Anti-Anti-Obama Backlash
BY AZI PAYBARAH
So what about this notion of a backlash against Obama critics?
Local Obama supporters on a conference call with New York reporters earlier said that they’d count on a backlash for whoever goes negative, but that probing Obama’s legislative record is to be expected.
State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem said, “the lessons of Iowa is that folks are not interested in negative. Folks are interested in positive, folks are interested in a vision." MORE …
McAuliffe Guarantees Victory
BY AZI PAYBARAH
On a phone call with reporters just now, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said, “We’re excited about where we are.” MORE …
How Did Times, WaPo Miss This Hillary Availability?
BY JOHN KOBLIN
On the back of the Hillary press bus, the word spread quickly that she
might be able to do an "avail," meaning she might speak to the press during an unscheduled stop at Gala, a downtown Manchester coffee shop.
It’s been a rare thing for her to a presser, but as one reporter put it: "She has no other choice." It’s time to start talking! MORE …
Video: Tired Clintons Rally, Tired Press Watches
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Talking points, symbols, signs—and an exhausted media crew this morning in New Hampshire. MORE …
In New Hampshire, Media Cry Cabby Price-Gouging
BY JOHN KOBLIN
When sleepy Hillary-beat reporters got off a charter plane after 4 a.m. last night, they got a terrible little surprise: a $150 cab ride to go from the Manchester airport to whatever hotel they were looking for (total distance: 5 miles away). MORE …
Video: An Obama Brooklynite on Campaigning in New Hampshire
BY AZI PAYBARAH
Here’s Obama supporter Conrad Woody told talking to me last night at the Obama rally on Gold Street about his experience campaign last week in New Hampshire. He also said his borough and the Granite State are pretty different, but that they’re both cold. MORE …
Ron Paul’s Haves, Dennis Kucinich’s Have-Nots
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Scruffy Ron Paul supporters are distributing these attractive bound copies of the Constitution at the corner of Elm and Merrimack. Next to them are Kucinich Kids, one of whom is wearily muttering "War is over if you want it…." MORE …
Crazytime in New Hampshire, Sagging New Yorkers
BY KATHARINE JOSE
Choire Sicha, in Manchester, sends the following: "Hillary Clinton is on her second stop of the day, at a sandwich shop in Manchester on Elm Street. A local couple having coffee, hunkering under a cameraman standing on a chair, report that this year it’s twice as intense as four years ago." MORE …
Axelrod Pre-Spins the Coming Clinton Attacks
BY STEVE KORNACKI
David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist, says his campaign is fully prepared for an onslaught of attacks from Hillary Clinton—and that Obama will not fall victim to them the way Paul Tsongas did in 1992.MORE …
Obama Makes a Clinton-Campaign Joke
BY STEVE KORNACKI
Inside an old airplane hangar at what used to be Pease Airforce Base in Portsmouth, Barack Obama made his first New Hampshire appearance since his Iowa victory.
He recited his standard stump speech, but there was a confident, almost giddy, spirit in his voice and among the crowd of a few hundred supporters. MORE …
Jetlagged! Hillary and Her Reporting Retinue Straggle Into New Hampshire
BY JOHN KOBLIN
NASHUA, N.H.—The rushed primary schedule gives reporters only five days in New Hampshire, with virtually no sleep since they finished up in Iowa late last night. This morning in New Hampshire, they were feeling it. MORE …
Big-Ticket New York Campaigns Marked Down
BY CHOIRE SICHA
Air Hillary pulled in a few hours ago and her press pack was crowded in a hangar at the airstrip in Nashua, NH. A few hundred supporters were carefully displayed before an enormous American flag.
But pity the reporters: their franchise is "fucked," as one member of the traveling press said. MORE …
On Plane to N.H., Penn Makes the Giuliani Argument
BY JASON HOROWITZ
Suddenly, the Hillary Clinton campaign sounds a lot like the Rudy Giuliani campaign.
On the campaign plane to New Hampshire after a devastating third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses—nine percentage points behind winner Barack Obama—chief strategist and pollster Mark Penn said, “We need to win February 5."
Speaking for more than a half-an-hour, Penn suggested that Clinton could get all the way to Feb. 5 without a single primary victory and still win the nomination. MORE …
Dennis Kucinich Owns New Hampshire
BY CHOIRE SICHA
What awaits the hordes inbound from Iowa? The sprawl of the Dennis Kucinich headquarters on Elm Street here in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire. (Also lots of snow. And fear.) MORE …
David Broder Not in Iowa for Warped 2008 Caucuses
BY CHOIRE SICHA
In today’s Washington Post, David Broder wrote that "New Hampshire is a more reliable, less distorted lens through which to view the presidential landscape than Iowa." Wait for New Hampshire, the headline requested. Mr. Broder is not only waiting for New Hampshire, he’s waiting in New Hampshire. MORE …
