Did Romney Really Win in New Hampshire?
Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire Primary by a big margin, right? But was it really as big as it seems?
Political analysis isn't my game, but looking over the New Hampshire Primary returns, something just struck me. As posted in the Wall Street Journal, Romney received 95,669 votes. Second-place Ron Paul got 55,455. It seems like a pretty sound victory until you look at two factors.
First, Romney got 39.4% of the total vote. Hardly an overwhelming percentage.
Second, if you add Huntsman's 40,903 votes to Ron Paul's 55,455, you get 96,358 - more votes than Romney, and a higher percentage of the votes too (36.6%).
Why add these two up? That's where it gets interesting.
When Santorum spiked in Iowa, it made for big headlines. But did you hear anything about Huntsman before or after the New Hampshire election? His numbers certainly spiked compared to his results in Iowa. I wonder about this. Again, I'm not political analyst, but it strikes me that there's a concerted effort out by the media to push Romney and the sort of Republican positions he holds.
We all know how Ron Paul was ignored for months by the main stream media (shamefully). It's only Paul's strong showings that have forced the media to acknowledge him lately. Of course, once the media had to acknowledge Ron Paul, we got a series of rather biased reports (which continue) about how he's crazy, bigoted, anti-Semitic, soft on defense, a "blame America" type - and on and on. All negative and, for the most part, unfair criticism based mostly on twisting the facts or outright lies.
Now Huntsman's been the one who's ignored. And let's remember that Huntsman shares a lot of Paul's libertarian philosophy.
So maybe between Paul and Huntsman we're seeing a surge of support for Libertarian ideas building out there - and somehow that's not something the media wants to recognize. Why? I think it's because a certain amount of Libertarian ideas threaten the established order. The established order wants Romney's mainstream Republican positions. They don't want Libertarian ideas mucking up the election.
But 96,358 is more votes than 95,669. So maybe the voters are on to something here.
Political analysis isn't my game, but looking over the New Hampshire Primary returns, something just struck me. As posted in the Wall Street Journal, Romney received 95,669 votes. Second-place Ron Paul got 55,455. It seems like a pretty sound victory until you look at two factors.
First, Romney got 39.4% of the total vote. Hardly an overwhelming percentage.
Second, if you add Huntsman's 40,903 votes to Ron Paul's 55,455, you get 96,358 - more votes than Romney, and a higher percentage of the votes too (36.6%).
Why add these two up? That's where it gets interesting.
When Santorum spiked in Iowa, it made for big headlines. But did you hear anything about Huntsman before or after the New Hampshire election? His numbers certainly spiked compared to his results in Iowa. I wonder about this. Again, I'm not political analyst, but it strikes me that there's a concerted effort out by the media to push Romney and the sort of Republican positions he holds.
We all know how Ron Paul was ignored for months by the main stream media (shamefully). It's only Paul's strong showings that have forced the media to acknowledge him lately. Of course, once the media had to acknowledge Ron Paul, we got a series of rather biased reports (which continue) about how he's crazy, bigoted, anti-Semitic, soft on defense, a "blame America" type - and on and on. All negative and, for the most part, unfair criticism based mostly on twisting the facts or outright lies.
Now Huntsman's been the one who's ignored. And let's remember that Huntsman shares a lot of Paul's libertarian philosophy.
So maybe between Paul and Huntsman we're seeing a surge of support for Libertarian ideas building out there - and somehow that's not something the media wants to recognize. Why? I think it's because a certain amount of Libertarian ideas threaten the established order. The established order wants Romney's mainstream Republican positions. They don't want Libertarian ideas mucking up the election.
But 96,358 is more votes than 95,669. So maybe the voters are on to something here.
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