Moe Lane

And I hope that they have good lawyers. REAL good lawyers.

Contrary to Matt Lewis, this is not unbelievable. This is why we insist on Voter ID laws.

To summarize the video, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sent a couple of people to New Hampshire primary polling places claiming that they were individuals that had actually died in the last couple months. They were, of course, secretly filming the proceedings… and came away with footage of multiple occasions where the poll workers let them have the ballot. Note, by the way, that every video clip ends with the Veritas people giving back the ballot without actually voting: I don’t know whether that will actually protect the group from being accused of voter fraud, but then that’s why we have a court system. At any rate, the video ends with some poor sacrificial lamb of a ward coordinator confidently assuring the Project Veritas people that nobody could get away with what the Project Veritas people just did. (more…)

First off, the RNC has the right idea here:

Chairman Reince Priebus doesn’t want any part of this primary, and I think that we can all agree that this is a quite refreshing development, yes?  (more…)

And then we can stop pretending that we particularly care what those voters think, just in time to go over to South Carolina and pretend that we all particularly care what those voters think. And so the cycle continues.

…What? Dude, I live in Maryland and I’m a Republican. Nobody – and I mean absolutely nobody – is going to even pretend to pretend to care about how I, or anybody else, plan to vote in our primary.  Heck, the deadline’s in two days and the only people on the ballot for President at this point are three local Democrats.  Just the way it is.

Via CNS (via Hot Air) comes this ‘argument’ from NH Romney supporter and state Senator Gary Lambert. To summarize it, Lambert wants us all to sit down, shut up, and endorse Romney despite the fact that Lambert himself is tacitly conceding that Romney does not share conservatives’ principles and beliefs.

No, really. (more…)

This should have been up yesterday, but the various technical breakdowns that I was having were fairly epic.  Anyway: you probably remember Ovide Lamontagne as being a NH Senate Republican primary candidate in 2010… and for graciously conceding the race when he lost the primary, which may have well saved the GOP that seat in the general election.  At any rate, he’s currently the only Republican candidate in the NH-GOV primary, and we spoke yesterday about the race and his plans for the campaign.

Ovide’s campaign site is here.  Just as a reminder: January’s NH Presidential primary is distinct from the state’s other primaries, which will all take place in September of 2012.  Also a reminder: New Hampshire elects governors to two-year terms (current Democratic governor John Lynch has… declined… to run for re-election).

Moe Lane (crosspost)

If so, the luxury of taking one’s time with picking a favorite GOP candidate is about to go away:

In a bombshell this afternoon, New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner raised the strong possibility of a December first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

In a statement entitled “Why New Hampshire’s Primary Tradition is Important,” Gardner, who has full authority under state law to set the date of the presidential primary, called Dec. 13 and Dec. 6 “realistic options.”

New Hampshire is blaming Nevada, which has decided to move its GOP primary up to January 14th, largely because Nevada is tired of having Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina always be first in the primary schedule.  New Hampshire wants Nevada to push it back to January 17th, and Nevada’s saying that it won’t, and at least one candidate – who isn’t Mitt Romney* – is totally taking New Hamphire’s side, and… OK, look, it’s high school all over again, you understand?  God help me for having to describe this dispute in such terms, but it’s the best analogy that fits.

(more…)

New Hampshire has two-year terms for governor, so Lynch was up for a fifth term in 2012; but he’s decided not to run.  Apparently being Governor of New Hampshire isn’t as much fun when the new, Republican-controlled legislature makes you spend less money to balance the budget and won’t let you trample all over a basic civil right* like self-defense (via @Lash3).  There’s also right-to-work reform looming, so really, eight years is enough, right?

The field was already pretty wide-open, by the way – despite the fact that Lynch was supposedly popular.  Then again, that’s such a subjective thing these days.  Particularly if you’re a Democrat with President Obama threatening to drag  down your ticket next year.  Not that I’m suggesting that this is the case in New Hampshire, of course.

Yet.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*More here.

Because God loves me and wishes for me to be happy, that’s why.  He knew that I was so busy going after all the other Democrats on my private list that I did not have the chance to give her shellacking – and 42% of the vote for an incumbent qualifies as ‘shellacking;’ so He, in His infinite benevolence, has given me a second bit at that particular apple.

Seriously, this is going to be a blast.  I cannot wait to hear how a rabid antiwar candidate justifies President Barack Obama’s neocon-driven war for oil in Libya.  I simply cannot wait.  I don’t know which will be more fun: the grudging words of praise, spit out like so many ashes; or the bitter eyes as Shea-Porter watches herself slowly strangle her own self-respect* for the sake of a seat in Congress…

Moe Lane

*Futilely, of course.

…but that’s probably hubris.

Nonetheless: any post on the Internet that mocks a person’s or group’s individual and/or collective intelligence will have at least one obvious spelling or grammatical error present in the first published draft.  I think that this is because people who see other people (whom they don’t like) make howlers will often fall all over themselves in the rush to post their sarcastic mockery.

Latest example: “New Hamshire.”

Via Instapundit.

That’s the implication, at least: Ms. Shea-Porter is going around telling people that the reason that she lost was because of all that dirty, dirty (and apparently foreign) special interest money.  The quote: “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere, and it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.*”

Let us leave aside for the moment the minor detail of why the PRC would want to topple a fellow-leftist: has the woman no understanding of campaign disclosure rules?  It’s not as if the money’s being delivered in paper sacks: we are actually able to know who contributed to various campaigns.  For example – and to use her own election race as an example – incoming Congressman Frank Guinta raised a total of 1.53 million this cycle, 21% of which was via PACs (and none of it from, say, the US Chamber of Commerce’s PAC).  Ms. Shea-Porter?  1.64 million, 30% via PAC money. Business/ideological in Guinta’s case, labor/ideological in Shea-Porter’s: all perfectly obvious,  and all reasonably transparent.

What’s actually bugging Shea-Porter, of course, is that the aforementioned US Chamber of Commerce happened to allocate 149K worth of negative campaign ads against her in the last two weeks of the race; probably not all that necessary (her polling was terrible), but it certainly didn’t help the incumbent much.  It nonetheless does give a crumb of rationalization to any progressives out there not yet ready to face objective reality; which is why the soon-to-be-former Representative is implying as overtly as she dares that her election losses were all the fault of the Godless Chinese Hordes. It’s a more appealing narrative to the left than the truth, which is that being an open progressive in the wild is an excellent way to lose one’s election by double digits. (more…)

Rasmussen shows a fairly unexpected primary bounce in NH for GOP gubernatorial candidate John Stephen: the race has gone from 50/39 Lynch/Stephen to 48/46 Lynch/Stephen.  Polling for this race has been somewhat sparse, but it should be noted that there has been notable movement towards in both the Rasmussen and PPP polls.  With the NH-SEN and NH-02 (no good recent polling on NH-01) races showing a definite break towards the GOP, Lynch may have to start worrying.

And so should national Democrats: it will not fit their narrative if the New Hampshire GOP runs the table next Election Night, and if this poll bears up, that’s now a genuine threat.  In other words, rumors of the extinction of the New England Republican may have ended up being a bit premature…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

He has conceded the primary, will not seek a recount, and has endorsed Kelly Ayotte (video here).  Ayotte has accepted the concession with equal grace and politeness, calling Lamontagne a gentleman and a principled conservative (H/T: Hot Air). From now on, it’s all about defeating Paul Hodes in the general election.

Would that more politicians acted this properly when they lose a primary.  Michael Castle and Lisa Murkowski, I’m looking at you.

Moe Lane

PS: Jeanne Shaheen will be up for re-election in four years. This is not that far off in time, and I hope that NH conservatives will remember this dignified end to the 2010 campaign, if it turns out to be relevant to the one in 2014…

Crossposted to RedState.