No Surprises in New Hampshire

Results for New Hampshire Republican Primary, January 10th, 2012

Mitt Romney 39.4%
Ron Paul 22.8%
Jon Huntsman 16.8%
Newt Gingrich 9.4%
Rick Santorum 9.3%
Rick Perry 1.2%

Romney did slightly worse than expected but remains the front runner even under attacks from fellow republicans (read Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry). These attacks on Romney's alleged "Corporate Raider" tactics coming from career politicans are out of place and if continued will hurt the overall Republican effort against Obama in the fall.

Ron Paul did slightly better than expected. The exposure of Ron Paul's newsletters, which at best portray him as a bad manager, and at worst as a racist, did not seem to affect support for Paul much. Actually no surprise there as Paul supporters seem to forgive any Paul misstep on the way.

Santorum a point below poll averages. This disappointed me as I think Santorum has a lot to bring to the table with his economic plan. He needs to get that in front of people and add to his reputation or perception that he is only a family values candidate, although he does articulate an exceptional grasp of foreign policy and the threats facing this Country, as opposed to the ostrich Ron Paul who foreign policy is to the left of Donald Duck.

Huntsman much better than predicted on the pre-primary poll average probably because he ignored Iowa in order to campaign in New Hampshire also putting money into New Hampshire, unlike Rick Santorum for instance.

Gingrich was projected to garner about 8% of the votes and he came in at a little over 9%, so it's a wash for him and onto South Carolina and the conservative South where he has the best chance of making up the room between him and Romney.

Republican Presidential Candidate Status, October 19, 2011

Boy, I am sure liking the Republican Presidential Debates. The field is starting to be whittled down now, allowing Americans to see and hear more of the candidates they are interested in. If the truth be known, each one of these candidates are a much. much better choice than the current clown we have in office.

The measurement of previous public office,loosely termed as experience, has to be off the table now that we have a President who was elected without any experience.

It will be interesting to see how the polls change after last night's debate. Just before the debate the following CNN survey, taken from Friday through Sunday, showed Mitt Romney and Herman Cain essentially tied.

Romney gets 26 percent of the vote, Cain gets 25 percent, and Perry gets 13 percent.

Ron Paul is in fourth place, at 9 percent, Newt Gingrich gets 8 percent, Michele Bachmann 6 percent, Rick Santorum 2 percent and Jon Huntsman 1 percent.

The number of undecideds, including those who would vote for someone else or no one else, is 10 percent - a relatively small number.

So accordingly to CNN the Republican Residential Candidate Tree is looking like this:

I think last night's debate will not change the leader board too much, but the changes will be in this direction: Cain - unchanged or up slightly; Romney - unchanged or down slightly; Perry - down a little; Paul - down a lot; Gingrich - up somewhat and perhaps the bigger winner of this debate; Bachmann - down a little; Santorum - down somewhat, but not because of his performance but due to people's perception that he is too much of a dark horse candidate;

What's that? The poll lists Huntsman, but Johnson's picture appears above? Wait a minute,......Yeah, you're right. Can anybody tell them apart?