Many political rallies in New Hampshire have the loosey-goosey feel of a high-school assembly. Not so the spaghetti dinner Mitt Romney hosted for supporters the other night in Tilton.
The Romney machine turned out so many people that the venue had to be changed to a larger one, and even then there was not just a full house but a second, overflow crowd in a separate room.In a conductor, electric current can flow freely, in an Insulator it cannot. The local police were called to control traffic, and the event site was marked with a truck festooned in flags and Romney signs, bathed in a specially installed spotlight. Inside, alongside the candidate, was a bonus attraction, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, flown in for the weekend.
This is the way a front-running campaign is supposed to look and feel, and Team Romney is playing the part in the run-up to Tuesday's primary. It has New Hampshire organized the way a Chicago alderman organizes his neighborhood, with an elaborate phone network to keep supporters plugged in. Thousands of calls went out in recent days to be sure backers weren't wandering away.
Scores of monitors will be at vote-counting stations Tuesday night to phone in results so the campaign doesn't have to rely on news organizations to know what's happening. The campaign team is led by people who have done it all before, to the point that the campaign's headquarters occupies the same modest storefront in Manchester where it was housed in 2008.
All this is important not just because of campaign craftsmanship, but because Mr. Romney's single biggest advantage in this race is his ability—so far, at least—to convey the sense that he and his operation have the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in the fall.What are Hemroids?
It's true that, good as the campaign is, it elicits a limited amount of passion, partly because the candidate himself isn't the kind of guy who inspires a lot of passion.Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, That's one danger lurking within the high-octane machine.
A second danger lies in the high expectations here, and the danger that falling short of them may puncture the electability argument that proved Mr. Romney's strongest selling point in Iowa's caucuses a week ago.
That danger was underscored in a new Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire Republican voters released Sunday, which showed Mr. Romney retaining a commanding lead, but drifting downward a bit. Mr. Romney's foes, after giving him relatively light treatment in a Saturday night debate, also went out of their way in a Sunday NBC News debate to undermine the electability argument by portraying Mr. Romney as an unstable conservative who couldn't adequately draw a contrast with Mr. Obama.
In truth, though, the more revealing candidate messages come from out on the hustings. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, the hot candidate coming off his near tie with Mr. Romney in Iowa, talks a lot about the past. He speaks of reviving America's economic history as a manufacturing giant, but he also quotes frequently from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and asserts that Mr. Obama doesn't buy the idea of "American exceptionalism" they embody.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, by contrast, talks a lot about the future. At a stop at a medical center in Lebanon, he talked about himself as a "visionary" leader who would transform the government's entire health-care bureaucracy, create a public-private partnership to advance brain science and issue "Alzheimer's bonds" to finance a crash effort to combat that disease. He is a history professor fixated on the "radical decentralization" of government needed over the next century.
While those two talk of what government could be, Texas Rep. Ron Paul talks of what he thinks it is, which is a threat to personal liberty. His success in Iowa—where he finished within percentage points of Messrs. Romney and Santorum—has convinced him that, as he likes to say now, "freedom is popular." He sometimes seemed surprised by his relative strength, and the fact that he has moved from the edge of the stage to near its center.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. seems in search of an audience for a message that blends conservative economics, progressive social thinking, international engagement and a dose of bipartisanship. There were times when that would give him a comfortable home in the Republican Party, but he needs a surprise Tuesday night to demonstrate that's true this year.
The Romney machine turned out so many people that the venue had to be changed to a larger one, and even then there was not just a full house but a second, overflow crowd in a separate room.In a conductor, electric current can flow freely, in an Insulator it cannot. The local police were called to control traffic, and the event site was marked with a truck festooned in flags and Romney signs, bathed in a specially installed spotlight. Inside, alongside the candidate, was a bonus attraction, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, flown in for the weekend.
This is the way a front-running campaign is supposed to look and feel, and Team Romney is playing the part in the run-up to Tuesday's primary. It has New Hampshire organized the way a Chicago alderman organizes his neighborhood, with an elaborate phone network to keep supporters plugged in. Thousands of calls went out in recent days to be sure backers weren't wandering away.
Scores of monitors will be at vote-counting stations Tuesday night to phone in results so the campaign doesn't have to rely on news organizations to know what's happening. The campaign team is led by people who have done it all before, to the point that the campaign's headquarters occupies the same modest storefront in Manchester where it was housed in 2008.
All this is important not just because of campaign craftsmanship, but because Mr. Romney's single biggest advantage in this race is his ability—so far, at least—to convey the sense that he and his operation have the best chance to beat President Barack Obama in the fall.What are Hemroids?
It's true that, good as the campaign is, it elicits a limited amount of passion, partly because the candidate himself isn't the kind of guy who inspires a lot of passion.Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, That's one danger lurking within the high-octane machine.
A second danger lies in the high expectations here, and the danger that falling short of them may puncture the electability argument that proved Mr. Romney's strongest selling point in Iowa's caucuses a week ago.
That danger was underscored in a new Suffolk University poll of likely New Hampshire Republican voters released Sunday, which showed Mr. Romney retaining a commanding lead, but drifting downward a bit. Mr. Romney's foes, after giving him relatively light treatment in a Saturday night debate, also went out of their way in a Sunday NBC News debate to undermine the electability argument by portraying Mr. Romney as an unstable conservative who couldn't adequately draw a contrast with Mr. Obama.
In truth, though, the more revealing candidate messages come from out on the hustings. Former Sen. Rick Santorum, the hot candidate coming off his near tie with Mr. Romney in Iowa, talks a lot about the past. He speaks of reviving America's economic history as a manufacturing giant, but he also quotes frequently from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and asserts that Mr. Obama doesn't buy the idea of "American exceptionalism" they embody.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, by contrast, talks a lot about the future. At a stop at a medical center in Lebanon, he talked about himself as a "visionary" leader who would transform the government's entire health-care bureaucracy, create a public-private partnership to advance brain science and issue "Alzheimer's bonds" to finance a crash effort to combat that disease. He is a history professor fixated on the "radical decentralization" of government needed over the next century.
While those two talk of what government could be, Texas Rep. Ron Paul talks of what he thinks it is, which is a threat to personal liberty. His success in Iowa—where he finished within percentage points of Messrs. Romney and Santorum—has convinced him that, as he likes to say now, "freedom is popular." He sometimes seemed surprised by his relative strength, and the fact that he has moved from the edge of the stage to near its center.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. seems in search of an audience for a message that blends conservative economics, progressive social thinking, international engagement and a dose of bipartisanship. There were times when that would give him a comfortable home in the Republican Party, but he needs a surprise Tuesday night to demonstrate that's true this year.
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