What does these men all have in common?
Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart, Edmund Muskee, Estes Kefauver, John McCain, Pat Buchanan, and Henry Cabot Lodge.
The answer is that all of them won the New Hampshire primary in a year in which they got nary a sniff of their party's nomination. New Hampshire has started to develop this sick need to thump the front runner and reward the fringe candidate.
John McCain is again leading in New Hampshire and has the possibility of becoming the only person to twice win there and not win his party's nomination. More alarming is that fringe crank Ron Paul has now surged to 3rd, ahead of Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuiliani and Fred Thompson.
Have Republicans in New Hampshire suddenly taken a liking to the wild-eyed Texas congressman? hardly. He has the lowest favorable number (42%) and the highest unfavorable (53%) of any Republican in the field.
So, how does one explain the surge?
Well, the answer is likely to piss you off but, in it, is the reason why New Hampshire is becoming irrelevant. You see, in the granite state, "independents" can vote in either primary. Estimates are that about 1/3 of voters in the Republican primary will be these...uh..."independents".
Sure, sure...some of them are true Independents and that explains why John McCain (the darling of the wishy washy) is on top. Yet, some of these "Independents" are nothing more than closet leftwingers trying to sabotage the GOP nomination.
The very same leftwingers who give rise to the Paul campaign in the first place.
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