The win Tuesday gave Romney a one-two sweep in the leadoff voting of the 2012 campaign, a first for any Republican apart from a sitting president, as the race moved to South Carolina and Florida.
The conservative candidates who stand the best chance to stop him there — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — were trailing far back and appeared unlikely to get a significant lift from their performances here.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas was a solid second, but will have difficulty expanding on that showing in states that are less conducive to his libertarian views on social issues and foreign policy.
Jon Huntsman Jr. was a weak third, with barely half of Romney's share of the vote. The former Utah governor, who concentrated almost his entire campaign in this state, insisted that he would move on.
Romney, who lost the state four years ago, sought to impart an air of inevitability to his candidacy with a celebratory speech Tuesday night that focused more on the fall election.
No sooner was Mitt Romney declared the winner of the New Hampshire primary Tuesday night than Democrats sent out a fundraising e-mail pummeling the former Massachusetts governor’s record on jobs, taxes ... and strapping the family dog to the roof of his car.
In an e-mail under the subject line “Car roof,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Executive Director Guy Cecil seized on the now-infamous tale of a Romney vacation nearly 30 years ago, during which the former governor put his family’s Irish setter, Seamus, into a dog carrier and strapped it onto the roof rack of a station wagon for a 12-hour trip to Canada.
The e-mail, which also takes aim at campaign-trail remarks Romney has made in recent weeks, reads: “Mitt Romney. Who likes ‘being able to fire people.’ Who said ‘corporations are people.’ Who laid off thousands and shipped jobs overseas. Who forced the family dog to ride on the car roof for a twelve-hour drive!”
Fresh off his New Hampshire win, Team Romney was likely expecting ramped-up attacks from national Democrats. But an attack along these lines may not have been what they imagined.
Sen. Jim DeMint, the influential Palmetto State Republican, says the answer is yes.
“I think Romney’s going to win here,” DeMint said in an interview posted on The Right Scoop, a conservative Web site. “I think some of the others who might’ve had some advantage here have really crossed ways with some Republicans as they criticized free-enterprise concepts. I think you might see Mitt Romney win here, but it’s possible that Gingrich or Santorum might make another run at it here. I just don’t know.”
The mention by DeMint of “free-enterprise concepts” was a reference to most of the GOP field’s criticism in recent days of Romney’s record at the helm of Bain Capital, which he led until the mid-1990s.
DeMint added that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has been “spending some time” in South Carolina but “doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of traction, and I think after Iowa and New Hampshire it’s going to be tough.”
“But I’ve been surprised before,” he said. “I’m going to work on the Senate races and let South Carolina decide for itself.”
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