Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire

Posted by Producer Andrew

Dave, Luke and I landed in New Hampshire late Friday night. After a few hours of sleep, we hit the road early Saturday morning in pursuit of candidates. Game on!

We heard that Ron Paul was going to be visiting the Windmill Restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire. When we got there, he was already surrounded by a small gaggle of reporters. The restaurant had pushed together a bunch of tables for the candidate to sit down for breakfast with his wife and staff, but they never had a chance. Paul went around to each table and chatted with the patrons, most of whom were just there for the food, apparently.

Ron Paul answers some questions from the press at the Windmill Family Restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire. Dave’s got a better photo here.

One woman told Ron Paul she wasn’t thrilled with his stance on same-sex marriage, since he believes the government shouldn’t have any say in the matter. When Luke talked to the gray-haired woman a few minutes later, she told him she was also pretty cool on Newt Gingrich as a candidate. “He wasn’t so spiffy at first, was he?” she asked.

After the Windmill Restaurant, we got back in our rented Nissan and raced up to a military museum up in Wolfeboro, NH, where Newt Gingrich stood in front of a World War II tank and addressed an adoring crowd. With the giant piece of war machinery as a backdrop, Gingrich started his speech with a dig at his rival Mitt Romney, who has a summer home not far from the event.

“I look at this tank lovingly,” Gingrich said, “because I remember Michael Dukakis. And it’s just a reminder that governors of Massachusetts don’t always make good presidential candidates.” (Dukakis, of course, fatally crippled his own 1988 campaign for president with an infamous appearance inside a tank.)

Newt Gingrich at the Wright Museum of WWII history in Wolfeboro, NH – where Mitt Romney just happens to have a summer home.

We had to leave Newt’s speech a little early so we could race back down to southern New Hampshire, where Rick Santorum had an event scheduled in a big red barn in the town of Hollis. Luke drove while Dave edited his tape in the back seat. We put a lot of miles on that Nissan Saturday.

Dave does not take a moment to rest when he’s on the road.

Santorum’s event was jam-packed with media, voters, fans and critics. The crowd couldn’t all fit in the barn, so the candidate took a few minutes to address the crowd outside. Someone shouted a string of critical questions at Santorum – covering everything from foreign policy to earmarks to gay marriage – and Santorum answered them all. A few minutes later, he and his entourage battled their way through the crowd and into the big red barn, when we could hear an even bigger crowd chanting his name.

Dave and Luke and about a billion reporters surround Rick Santorum in Hollis, NH.

After the Santorum event, we headed back north to Manchester, NH, where we started our day, to get ready for Saturday night’s big ABC debate. You can read Dave’s take on that here.