Quick New Hampshire Update

David Weigel | January 5, 2008

Some aircard malfunctioning and schedule blips (driving 30 minutes for a cancelled interview takes a bite out of your day) have cut down my blogging, but I've been filling notebooks since last night. Some stuff I'd like to write about in more detail later:

- Chatted with Ron Paul at a private Merrimack meeting with undecided voters. He got a softball from me about how it felt to outpoll Rudy Giuliani in Iowa: "That was the highlight of the evening." He'd been gloomy about not coming in third, and a result-tabulating temporarily gave Rudy fifth place, which dropped his jaw until staff proved it wasn't actually happening.

- Caught a Mitt Romney town hall in Derry, a low-key and low-energy affair which had empty seats at the beginning and about 20 more by the end. Romney revealed something when he tried to prove the Iowa results represented an anti-Washington vote, and Barack Obama was part of that, and then warned that "we can not afford Barack Obama as the next president." Only about a fifth of the room applauded. Very, very different than when Republican candidates say the word "Hillary." Romney almost had a Biden moment complimenting Obama: "He's a nice fella. He's a well-spoken fella.

- Ran into Whitney Gravel, wife of Mike, and Vermin Supreme, the ever-present fringe candidate whose agenda promises "friendly fascism." (Both were reason readers, so no jokes, but there's video.)

- Tagged along with Ron Paul canvassers in Amherst as they tried to turn undecided independents and Republicans over to their side. It was revealing: I'll have video of that later.

I'm not quite sure if I'll be liveblogging the ABC News/WMUR/Facebok debates tonight, but there will be two threads: one for the 7 p.m. GOP debate, one for the 9 p.m. Democratic debate.