Wall Street's Candidate Wins New Hampshire

There is no doubt as to who the favorite candidate of Wall Street is -- it's Mitt Romney. The Wall Street movers and shakers have made that clear with the millions of dollars they have poured into his campaign. And tonight they are celebrating, because their candidate performed as expected in New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney got near the expected 40% that some polls had been predicting for a while now, and he scored a solid victory with a double-digit lead. He needed to do that since New Hampshire is kind of his home turf (bordering Massachusetts), or he would have been perceived as very weak. But he did it, and now it's time to go South and see if he can maintain the momentum he currently has. South Carolina is next (on January 21st). Any kind of win there for Romney would be good -- even one as slim as he had in Iowa, since that state has a lot of teabagger/evangelicals (a group Romney still has not shown he can win over).

Ron Paul finished a solid second in New Hampshire, doing even better there than he did in Iowa (where he finished third). That should provide him with the impetus to remain in the race for the long haul. However, I still can't see a way for him to win the Republican nomination. I still think he'll wind up with about 10-12% of the delegates, and that's not nearly enough. He's just too weird for even the teabagger base of the GOP.

The interesting race of the night was the one run by Jon Huntsman. He finished in a solid third place, and told his supporters that he is now in the race (i.e., a credible candidate). I'm not buying it though. He didn't even get 20% of the vote, and New Hampshire was his best shot of all the early states. I doubt that his perceived "moderate conservatism" is going to win over many voters south of the Mason-Dixon line (he's not really a moderate, but compared to some of the nut-jobs he's running against he looks like one). I would be very surprised if he did well in South Carolina.

Then we come to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They took fourth and fifth places in New Hampshire, finishing in a virtual tie. They had both hoped to do better and get a springboard into South Carolina, but it didn't happen. Now they must do well on the 21st to still be considered as viable candidates. If they can't win South Carolina, they need to at least keep very close to Romney, and deny him a majority of that state's delegates.

Rick Perry was totally embarrassed in New Hampshire. I know he didn't do much there since Iowa, but he had to expect to have done a little better than he did (couldn't even get 2,000 votes). The people of New Hampshire basically took him out behind the woodshed and gave him an old-fashioned whuppin'. He MUST do well in South Carolina -- a lot better than the 5% he is currently polling, or it will be time for him to stop wasting time and money and go back home to Texas.

Then there's Buddy Roemer. What can I say. I'm still not sure most Republicans even realize he's still in the race. There's no sense in wasting any more blog space discussing his pitiful candidacy.

Here are the vote totals for New Hampshire:

94% REPORTING
Mitt Romney...............92,937 (39.40%)
Ron Paul...............53,856 (22.83%)
Jon Huntsman...............39,743 (16.85%)
Newt Gingrich...............22,220 (9.42%)
Rick Santorum...............22,019 (9.33%)
Rick Perry...............1,638 (0.69%)
Buddy Roemer...............890 (0.38%)
Write-ins...............785
Others...............1,817
TOTAL VOTE...............235,905

And here is a rough estimate of delegates (after two states) won so far according to MSNBC.com:

Mitt Romney...............16
Rick Santorum...............11
Ron Paul...............6
Jon Huntsman...............2
Newt Gingrich...............0
Rick Perry...............0
Buddy Roemer...............0

It will take 1,143 delegates to win the nomination.