Romney in New Hampshire: Holding Onto a Broad but Tenuous Lead

Salem, N.H.

Mitt Romney is in front-runner’s form. Romney is standing amid a crush of supporters, warming up the standing-room town hall crowd at an Elks Lodge adorned with mauve stage curtains and plenty of his royal-blue “Believe in America” placards. The book on Romney–at least the one long peddled by his opponents–is that he’s a political chameleon, a man who modulates his rhetoric to match the mood of his audience. What this criticism elides is that Romney is often really good at it, as he was Monday night in Salem.


Sans tie, his sleeves rolled up, Romney warms up by taking the crowd on an aw, shucks tour of his glittering resume: his initiation into the business world at an august consulting firm he doesn’t name, his star turn running a venture capital and private equity firm–”whatever the heck that is.” Romney has a way of hurling partisan barbs while still coming across as cool and measured. “President Obama, while he may be a nice guy, is simply in over his head,” Romney says, almost sympathetically. Then, to the delight of the crowd, he proceeds to clobber Obama for throwing Israel “under the bus,” for apologizing to the world for America’s greatness, for preferring European-style government intervention to free-market capitalism.  Read More

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