GOP is having a primary too!!
and expect to see a lot of McCain in NH. he said he will work hard to keep it and his home state of AZ in Bush's column in the fall!
McCain Returns To New Hampshire
Four years ago, John McCain shocked the political world with his 19-point win over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire GOP primary. Although McCain dropped out of the race just over a month later, he remains a popular figure in the Granite State – particularly among New Hampshire’s much-coveted and little-understood Independent voters – and almost every Democratic candidate has tried to woo devotees of the "Straight Talk Express."
Alas, for candidates like Joe Lieberman, who touted his McCain-esque credentials in a recent ad here, McCain is in New Hampshire on Monday campaigning not for a Democrat but for his former rival, President Bush. McCain will appear at one event, a rally at the City Hall Auditorium in Nashua and he’ll resurrect his Straight Talk Express bus for the ride there.
A poll from Boston Globe/WBZ-TV shows that New Hampshire Independents who voted for McCain will make up a significant chunk – 10 percent – of the Democratic primary electorate on Tuesday. The survey, taken between Thursday and Sunday, found the breakdown of that group to be 31 percent for Kerry, 19 percent for Edwards, 14 percent for Dean and 12 percent for Clark. Lieberman's ad campaign doesn’t seem to have worked: he is getting only 6 percent from these voters.
And, perhaps explaining the importance Bush-Cheney has placed on distracting voters from Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Newsday reports: "For Republicans, New Hampshire's real importance is not so much the primary as the fall general election. Bush narrowly won this state's four electoral votes in 2000 by 1 percent; losing the state would have guaranteed an Al Gore victory regardless of what occurred in Florida, and could theoretically make the difference in November."
McCain’s quick visit comes on the heels of two other popular Bush-Cheney surrogates who visited New Hampshire over the weekend, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki. On Saturday, Giuliani visited with firefighters and emergency medical technicians (not that anyone could be accused of politicizing 9/11 or anything) before attending a rally in Manchester, Newsday reports. Pataki was in the state on Sunday, possibly scouting it out for 2008.
Other Bush-Cheney surrogate events include a stop by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who campaigns in Portsmouth on Tuesday where he’ll lunch with Rockingham County Women Voters (and do plenty of interviews). Also attending the rally in Nashua with McCain will be former Montana governor and Bush-Cheney Campaign Chairman Marc Racicot. President Bush’s sister, Doro Bush Koch, campaigned throughout the state on Sunday.
