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Romney Lands With A Thud in New Hampshire

Mitt Romney
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MANCHESTER, NH – Mitt Romney may be dominating the New Hampshire polls, but his first major event upon returning to the Granite State from his eight-vote Iowa victory wasn’t exactly a triumphant welcome home.

At a Manchester high school, Romney entered the stage for a town hall with new supporter John McCain, who won New Hampshire’s primary in 2000 and 2008. After brief speeches in which McCain called on New Hampshire to “catapult [Romney] to victory” with a big showing, they opened up the floor to questions. First up? A self-proclaimed “Occupy Boston” and “Occupy New Hampshire” activist, who challenged Romney to defend his famous “corporations are people” line.

Clearly used to it at this point, Romney launched into a lengthy, detailed, and impressively delivered explanation of how he views corporations as “collections of people that are trying to have good jobs for themselves” rather than just “buildings.” He even mixed it up on a follow up question about whether retained earnings that corporations sit on rather than invest are still productive.

“When a business has profit it can do good things,” he replied.

One woman asked why he favored increasing health care costs, (“I don’t think anyone is in favor of seeing rising health care costs”). A Chinese-American immigrant said she felt his China-bashing rhetoric was “degrading” to Asians.

“I hope I haven’t put any Asians down,” he said, adding he supported legal immigration of all kinds.

It was only after several questions that he received anything approximating a softball — a small child asked whether we would enter a military alliance with the newly formed Iraqi government.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), one of Romney’s top surrogates in the state, told reporters afterwards that tough questions were what New Hampshire is “known for.”

“I can tell you New Hampshire is very much the representation of a purple state,” she said. “You will have very different viewpoints.”

Wandering around the event, Romney supporters were surprisingly difficult to find in the crowd, even among those sporting campaign stickers and signs. Outside the event, a small group of backers politely argued with a group of unidentified protestors dressed in animal costumes, including a dolphin mocking Romney’s “flip flops.”

“We loved him as governor,” Amanda Stradling, who moved to the state from Massachusetts, told TPM, holding a nine-month old baby wearing a Romney sticker.

But for every Romney, there seemed to be plenty of undecideds, independents, and even Democrats. One group of three friends, two of whom said they plan on voting for Obama, came up from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut as “political tourists” just to check out the candidates.

“It’s just too early to decide,” one twenty-something in a Boston Red Sox hat said.

Simona Amiet, a homemaker who immigrated from Switzerland 20 years earlier, said she was leaning Romney because he was “knowledgeable with enterprise,” but had yet to decide. A Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008, she said she knew she wouldn’t be voting Democrat again in the general election, upset with both deficits and how he treated her favorite candidate four years ago.

Al Plass, 57, said as an independent he was still not sold on Romney, and that he was beginning to even warm up to Rick Santorum. But he was still holding out hope that his dream candidate would run: Donald Trump.

“He has way more business experience than Romney,” he said. “He’s straightforward, he’s a patriot, he loves this country.”

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