New Hampshire Proves All the Wrong Things

As the results start pouring in from all of the precincts in New Hampshire, the Granite State is not surprising me, or anyone else it seems, very much.  After 73% of the votes have come in, Mitt Romney, at 38%, leads his closest opponent, Ron Paul, by over 14%.  This was reflected in the attitude of Governor Romney in my time in New Hampshire as well.  Every other candidate that we heard, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Fred Karger, all did their best to relay their basic points to the crowd, trying to win the votes of the people of New Hampshire.  Romney, however, didn’t play the same games.  He was so confident that he would win this primary, and probably the nomination in the end, that he didn’t feel the need to address his stance on most issues.  His idea was simple: get out there, look pretty, and sound confident.  And why shouldn’t he? It is more than likely that he will win the nomination.  So likely, in fact, that he didn’t bother attacking his fellow Republicans, he went straight for Obama himself.  After his rally, I had to remind myself that it was January 8^th and not November 4^th.  The most surprising thing about these results is how well Jon Huntsman is doing, considering how much more conservative his opponents are compared to himself. 

            However, the Hofstra Goes to New Hampshire trip was a rewarding experience, even if it did reinforce some preexisting beliefs.  It didn’t give me any real insight into our political process, or prove to me that the system and the candidates within it are getting better.  It also didn’t prove to me that there is a good candidate for the presidency that can actually fix our existing problems without creating new ones.  In fact, it proved the opposite, and I wholeheartedly include President Obama in that statement.  It confirmed to me that the Republican Party is still way too out there to get my vote, and that anyone who isn’t quite so out there isn’t going to have the money to really run.  Meeting Fred Karger was probably the best part of the trip, because it renewed my faith in the Republicans.  It proved to me that there could be a moderate conservative with a fairly liberal view on social issues, and that not every single one of them is going straight down the party lines on everything.  OK, maybe Ron Paul proved the second half of that statement already, but Karger proved it in a good, non-government destroying way.  The other good part of the trip was the interaction with the conservative and right-leaning students on the trip.  All of the ones I talked to were very intelligent people, and weren’t raving right wing lunatics.  This gave me faith that, even though it seems we are doomed to another four years of either a president with great ideas and no force behind them, or one with plenty of force but no good ideas, maybe in the future when some of the people that joined me on that trip are the ones running we can have one that combines the good elements of both of those bad presidents.