In a Governing magazine study of how governors are working with legislatures controlled by the other party, Louis Jacobson writes that Gov. John Lynch has “largely been overtaken by events.”
“In New Hampshire, the reform push is coming from the Legislature, and Lynch has not had enough legislative backing to keep several of his vetoes from being overridden,” said Andrew E. Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. James Pindell, the political director at WMUR-TV in New Hampshire, puts it bluntly. He calls Lynch — who is not running for another term — “insanely popular and insanely irrelevant.”
Five GOP presidential wannabes were in the state this weekend for back-to-back cattle calls with Granite State Republicans. The results were so underwhelming that Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party declared, “The race needs more responsible adults who can actually do the job.”
Mitt Romney, the ostensible front runner, struggled.
Romney remains an exceptionally unnatural public speaker. To convey passion and excitement, he raises the pitch of his voice and imbues it with urgency. But it never quite clicks. His tone and affect are like that of an adult doing a dramatic reading of a pirate story to a wide-eyed three year old. It doesn’t help that he speaks too quickly and often trips over his lines. At points during his speech, Romney seemed to slip into a frenzy and start madly free associating economic buzzwords.
Romney was especially maladroit when he tried to ad-lib a Jimmy Carter-Barack Obama comparison about how Republicans need to hang the “Obama Misery Index” around Obama’s neck.
Romney repeated the “we’re going to hang him” locution once more and then, all of a sudden, in mid-sentence, seemed to realize that metaphors about hanging a black man probably wouldn’t redound to his political benefit. [VIDEO]
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Projected Democratic seats: 190
