You GO, Girl!

I am actually glad that Hillary has won New Hampshire (seriously) in the Democratic debate, and delighted that John McCain has won on the Republican side. Let's face it, the primaries are a horse race, and if one candidate comes in and runs the table, it gets boring FAST, and people focus on the other party (or some other shiny thing). If both anointed candidates run the table, then we get severely low voter turnout and general boredom. which favours the Republicans (because they can always find some way to get their base frothing at the mouth).

The overall lesson here is that all the TV pundits -- all of them, without exception -- were wrong. They wrote off McCain months ago, they pronounced Hillary all but dead last week. Why do people listen to teevee pundits, why does anyone pay them anything, and how can I get that job??

If the Dems were the ones who fixed elections instead of the Republicans, I would tell them to set their cheating machines to randomly let one of the top three win primaries at random at least through February 5th. The public is now engaged. This is where you want them. Independent Republicans and right-leaners are kind of looking over the fence at the Dems because their own candidates are so awful and mentally ill. This is what you want them to do.

The Republicans, on the other hand, need to drag out their destruction of Mike Huckabee as long as possible (he's a shoo-in for South Carolina, so he's got at least one more victory in the bag, and my guess is he'll take Florida too) please and thank you. Evangelicals who've been played for decades by the Republicans need a get a good, long look at what the Right-Wing Hate Machine does to someone they don't approve of. The Dem machine can be tough at times too, but by their nature Dems just aren't anywhere near as ruthless. If Hillary and Obama were Republicans, Hillary would have, as Chris Matthews so sweetly put it, "strangled the young senator in his crib." Ah, conservative commentators -- what a way with words!

UPDATE: Just as I was writing this about how the Republicans will destroy Huckabee because ... well basically because he doesn't hate enough people, the AP is reporting that Romney's strategist says the Mittster is the only one who can "stand up to the militant gay agenda." Oh yes, that's the biggest problem in the US right now. Have they really no fresh canards left to play on the stupid unwashed out there but the fantasy of armed gays forcing their kids to turn queer? Really??

Anyway, so it's good news for everybody that neither Huckabee nor Romney won, and more importantly it shows that there is at least one state in the union where, if you have to vote Republican at all, at least you vote for the one who isn't batshit insane. Good on New Hampshire!