Word: contestant
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...Hampshire dynamic could be reversed at the next contest, on Jan. 15 in Michigan. The major Democratic candidates, facing sanctions from the national party because the state moved its primary date so early, aren't seriously competing there. But the Republican contest will be a spirited one, meaning that independents - and even some Democrats - will be drawn into the action. McCain won the last contested GOP primary there in 2000, but Mitt Romney - who grew up in Michigan and whose father was Governor of the state in the '60s - is making a serious bid tailored to independents' tastes. Though Romney...
...Year's Day, two days before the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney crisscrossed eastern Iowa in his red, white and blue Mittmobile, trying to inch past the insurgent Mike Huckabee in the final moments before the first presidential nominating contest in the nation. He touched down at seven different house parties, or, as the day's inescapable football metaphor would have it, "House Party Huddles." Of course, they were less huddles than tailgate parties with large-screen TVs instead of stadiums and living rooms instead of parking lots. And Romney was less a featured attraction than halftime entertainment. In Clive, Iowa...
...Indeed, the contest between Romney and Huckabee has been widely framed as a contest between Iowans' body parts: head (Romney) versus heart (Huckabee). Will most of the people who show up on caucus night be "heart" people - the loosely organized homeschoolers and evangelicals to whom Huckabee owes his front-runner status? Or will they be "head" people, precisely targeted and courted by the Romney campaign? (Staffers boast of having made over 36,000 phone calls to supporters in the past two days...
...candidates who have just gotten shellacked, the best strategy is a declaration that the results didn't matter because of the peculiarities of the specific contest. George W. Bush mastered this in 2000. After he lost the New Hampshire primary by 18 percentage points to Senator John McCain, he downplayed the significance of one victory: "The road to the Republican nomination and the White House is a long road. Mine will go through all 50 states." Then he argued that McCain, "spent more time in this great state than any of the other candidates, and it paid off" - the rhetorical...
...Republican side, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee lead a large field of candidates who on the whole have spent fewer days in the state - and less money on their races - than their Democratic rivals. Yet their contest, too, is neck and neck...