January 6, 2012: The People will Speak, Wrong-Ward Drift, Santorum on the Outside

In Iowa the party activists spoke, in New Hampshire the people will speak for in the Granite State the nation will observe the first presidential primary election of the season.  

The primary, sampling as it does a much broader cross-section of the electorate, will favor the more moderate Mitt Romney the former governor of Massachusetts who is campaigning here in his ‘back yard’. 

New Hampshire is to Boston what New Jersey is to New York City, that is the media markets of these cities dominate the landscape heavily influencing neighboring states.  Accordingly the Boston media market  is important not only in the Massachusetts primary held later in the year but in the New Hampshire primary as well.  It is significant to note that four years ago the Boston Globe endorsed John McCain over Romney and McCain emerged victorious.  This year the Globe endorsed John Huntsman, former Utah Governor, over Romney citing Mitt’s penchant for changing his stripes in an effort to appeal to the ultra-conservative base of the party.  Romney’s wrong-ward drift has been well documented and need not be repeated here, and Mitt’s efforts ring just as hollow as those of ‘Baby Huey” who is being rejected by the very ideological purists he recruited into the party, because he proved not stalwart enough for their liking. 

Be that as it may, Romney’s efforts have not been hollow enough for the Boston Globe.  The editorial chiding by the Globe may, in the end, prove beneficial to the Romney campaign. The Boston Globe may have unwittingly given Romney the bona fides needed to help convince the unwashed that he is acceptable to them. The wrath of the editorial board of the major organ of the ‘liberal East’, may have been just the tonic needed to immunize Romney from rejection by a sizable portion of ideological conservatives, if not it’s fundamentalist purists.  That remains to be seen, in the meantime Santorum is gaining