Dispatch from Boston Phoenix New Hampshire correspondent Dan McCarthy:
MANCHESTER
– Rick Santorum wants to be like Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign
New Hampshire Primary. He wants to compare his plight here against
Mitt Romney to how the Gipper came around and whooped George H. W.
Bush, who eventually conceded and accepted the VP nod. That's the
message that he's pounding home across the Granite State, which he's
traversing in a ho-hum neo-Scott Brown "I'm regular like you"
Dodge Ram 5000.
PHOTOS: Scenes from Friday's New Hampshire primary campaign events
Last
night's scene was staged for this, going down at a 75-year old
Manchester restaurant named Belmont Hall that's buried like a deer
tick in a residential nook on the east side of Manch. The place is a
New England version of the Del Boca Vista rec room in Seinfeld; the
Belmont Hall promise: “You won’t see any item on the menu that
you can’t pronounce.”
The
press stampede moved right past even the most ambulatory retirees for
pole position. Fifteen minutes before Santorum was scheduled to
arrive, the room was already bursting at the seams with a cross
section of the local electorate straight out of central casting: kids
in loose fitting jackets and scraggly mops, AARP subscribers in
comfortable white sneakers. Outside, a partition of picketers
swarmed, while everyone's favorite performance artist-candidate and
boot-hat wearer Vermin Supreme belched through his bullhorn: "Raise
your hands and drop your pants Rick Santorum!"
Just
before the candidate arrived, a bald guy sporting a Santorum-y
sweater-vest – who turned out to be Merrimack Town Councilor and
sign-planter Bill Boyd – revealed to a grunting crowd that the fire
department had declared the facility unsafe, and that more than 100
people would have to fuck off and wait out in the cold.
At
first, nobody moved much. We couldn't really hear him very well; but
as groans and snarky comments rose up through the crowd – something
about 'organization'; something else about 'bullshit'; and even one
"Ron Paul would have figured this out already" – Boyd
announced that the party would be held in the rear parking lot. And
in rolled Sir Richard.
When
the door opened and Santorum emerged, throngs of supporters jammed
the entrance snapping pics, while the more doltish ones cawed for
autographs on everything Santorum and non-Santorum – lawn-signs,
baseballs, and even glossy head shots of the man himself. Even if he
loses to Romney on Tuesday (which he will), this is the closest this
guy will ever come to rock stardom.
Rick
blasted his rehearsed and affable talking points – this is the most
important election of your life, the power and glory of free
enterprise, true conservatism, yadda, yadda, yadda. At least that's
what I think. In reality nobody – besides maybe those lucky enough
to squeeze into the half-moon scrum of journalists and cameramen –
could hear a word of Santorum’s dulcet, confident tones.
Still
things got interesting, as the parking lot set-up gave hecklers the
perfect chance to dominate. One was utterly relentless, blurting out
counters to any point Santorum made, and even causing a crowd member
to politely chide him: "I don't support Obama but I wouldn't
come to one of his speeches and disrespect him.” Another Santorum
groupie later screamed in the protester's face: “SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
This is the true hideous spirit of modern day campaign theater.
Candidate talks. No real answers. Please pick me.
At
one point a little girl asked (or was coached to ask) if Santorum
could share the biggest mistake that he's made, to which the
candidate responded by repeating the question. At that point a
heckler suggested "running for president," earning a few
snickers from the small angry youth mob holding a requisite “Google Santorum”
placard. Behind them stood a wall of Occupiers holding cardboard
signs calling to get big money out of politics, while a handful of
Ron Paul foot soldiers passed out tracts and info sheets to people
who couldn’t care less.
On
the topic of the difference between him and his opponents, Santorum
made sure to note his theory that the candidate with the most money
doesn't always win. In actuality, though, that is the case.
I'd been at an AM station out in Nashua earlier and heard the
figures: for Perry, spending worked out to upwards of $500 a vote,
while Romney spent $147 a vote, and Santorum spent about $20. The
latter sounds about right if you consider how, the night after Iowa,
Santorum’s main website crashed because their servers couldn’t
handle the spike in traffic (just one of many of Santorum’s online
problems).
That's
where we are at this juncture in the circus of the century. Perry and
Huntsman are likely to bow out. Romney is believed to have an edge
because he has a house here and was governor of neighboring
Massachusetts (even though no one likes him there, and despite it not
helping him in 2008). And Santorum, the gay-bashing “Jesus
candidate” who once claimed that the Massachusetts clergy sex-abuse
scandal stemmed from Boston's cultural liberalism, is a motherfucking
frontrunner. I guess in this kind of election – a big bummer for
Republicans if there ever was one – that's what's needed to make
things interesting enough for people to hold their noses and vote.
Latest Slideshows
