“Tonight we made history,” Romney told cheering supporters before pivoting to a stinging denunciation of President Barack Obama. “The middle class has been crushed ... our debt is too high and our opportunities too few,” he declared — ignoring the rivals who had been assailing him for weeks and making clear he intends to be viewed as the party’s nominee in waiting after only two contests.
His Republican rivals said otherwise, looking ahead to South Carolina on Jan. 21 as the place to stop the former Massachusetts governor. Already, several contenders and committees supporting them had put down heavy money to reserve time for television advertising there.
Even so, the order of finish — Ron Paul second, followed by Jon Huntsman, with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum trailing — scrambled the field and prolonged the increasingly desperate competition to emerge as the true conservative rival to Romney.
Despite disappointing finishes, Santorum and Gingrich both told supporters that they would remain in the race. Both conservatives will appeal to the state's conversative base.
Knowing he may stumble in New Hampshire, Santorum told reporters early Tuesday that he's have chances outside New Hamphire. "There are lots of contests still to come,'' Santorum said. "There's going to be lots of opportunities to rise and fall."
Santorum, bolstered after pulling a virtual tie with Romney in Iowa, said there wasn't time enough to capitalize on that momentum before New Hampshire's primary and that he would be content to pull a double-digit percentage of the votes.
Despite a relatively low unemployment rate of 5.2% — vs. the national unemployment rate of 8.5% — the economy was the top concern of New Hampshire voters, according to results of an exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press and TV networks. Among them, 45% favored Romney.
About one third of those polled said their main criterion for picking a candidate was finding someone to defeat President Obama in the 2012 Presidential election. The survey was conducted at 40 randomly selected sites here, and the preliminary results are based on interviews with 1,774 voters. The poll has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points
Romney's victory speech focused on Obama for lax economic policies. "The last three years have lot of change, but they haven't offered much hope," Romney said. "We know it must be better and it will be better. That conviction guides our campaign. Americans know that our future is brighter and better than these troubled times. The president has run out of ideas. Now he's running out of excuses."
Romney had spent the past two days explaining and defending an offhand comment that he liked "being able to fire people." That comment attracted fire from Huntsman and Perry, among others, who used that quote to reinforce a withering assault on Romney as a venture capitalist in the private equity firm Bain Capital, which took over companies and sometimes laid off workers.
A former ambassador to China in the Obama administration, Huntsman spent the final 48 hours trying to capitalize on a notable debate exchange with Romney, who had criticized Huntsman for serving in Obama's administration. Huntsman countered that he had put his country ahead of partisan politics.
Perry had also criticized Romney over his role at Bain Capital, calling him a "vulture capitalist." But the anti-Romney sentiment didn't sway enough Granite State voters.
Shannon Taber, 37, a bartender, voted for Romney because she said she's looking for "basically someone who can beat Obama."
She said she likes Romney's experience and the fact that polls show he's got support. As a Republican, she feels "it's time to band together and pick someone."
Kevin Langelier, 42, an unemployed accountant, said he liked Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts."He's got a successful career as a businessman and I think he can do a lot for the economy," Langelier said. "I think he can beat Obama. I don't think anyone else is electable.
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