Last night's Republican results in the New Hampshire primary were almost precisely what we cats had been hoping for to keep their nightmare race bollixed up: Trump way out in front, Kasich (who has nowhere else to win right away) in second, and the rest of the clown-car passengers stepping all over each other way back in the pack. And the icing on the cake? Baby Marco Rubio in fifth! As we said, exactly what we wanted.
So, we're pleased. But we couldn't do a New Hampshire wrap-up without these various and sundry observations:
John Kasich made a big deal last night about having run a clean campaign. (Let's forget for a moment — although Donald Trump has not — about the super-negative anti-Trump ad that Kasich's PAC aired in November before it got yanked.) Touting one's squeaky cleanliness may go over well in Iowa and New Hampshire, but not in the Land of Lee Atwater. They play dirty down there, and Kasich will need a new strategy, fast.
Well, so much for Baby Marco's "3-2-1" strategy. (Third in Iowa, second in the Granite State, first in South Carolina.) Instead, Baby Marco is Miss Colombia to John Kasich's Miss Philippines. Poor boy. How much will his many establishment donors in the Palmetto State help him there? We're thinking that he's so wounded now, he may be able to avoid being attacked for awhile — but on the other hand, another fifth-place result, or a poor fourth, could finish him off. So he's probably still a target.
If Chris Christie had any, um, guts, he would take a pass on South Carolina and just go camp out in Nevada for two weeks. But danger, Will Robinson: The Christie campaign had just $1 million in the bank at the end of January. We cats are wondering what happened to Home Depot moneybag Ken Langone's pledge to do "everything" he could to get Christie elected. "I’m particularly good at fundraising," Langone boasted. Whoops!
Finally, yes, we would have loved it if Secretary Clinton had been able to keep Bernie Sanders below 56 percent. That would have given her half of the delegates. But the silver lining to the size of Sanders's victory (and of his war chest) is that there's really no excuse for him to skip South Carolina, as tempted as he might be to do so. If he goes all in there, will he have enough staff to go all in in Nevada at the same time? We're not sure.
A smart, intrepid campaign reporter would try to figure out where Bernie's Iowa staff went — but the more lazy narratives we hear, and the more overblown, simplistic, 96-point headlines we see, the more we realize that journalists like that are a relic of the past. We cats HISS.
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