It's now an hour and a half before the first real electoral contest in this Presidential Election season. Sure, Iowa and Wyoming have had their caucuses...but the first real ballots are cast just after midmight in Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, New Hampshire.
A whopping 16 people will vote in Dixville Notch tonight, while another 29 will cast ballots in Hart's Location--some 75 miles away. 45 people will kick off a day of voting that has been anticipated for over a year.
While the results may not be wholly indicative of how the Granite State will vote, they are part of the tradition and lore that is the New Hampshire Primary.
This, friends, is our Super Bowl.
It's hard to believe that 24 hours from now, New Hampshire will be on its way to near-political irrelevance for another four years.
We get to see the candidates in a way that no other state gets to. It's like John Kerry says--New Hampshire forces candidates to be better campaigners. They have to attend the house parties. They have to attend the town hall meetings. They have to eat a lot of pizza. They have to submit to the comprehensive vetting that New Hampshirites put them through if they want to be considered a viable candidate for the highest office in the land.
While the rest of the country doesn't think so, New Hampshire plays a unique roll in the political process. We have come to take this role very seriously and it has become part of our tradition. We love our way of life here and, while we don't presume to tell anyone else in the country how they should vote, we expect to have this opportunity to get at the candidates before anyone else. Forget the money, it's about being able to look a candidate in the eye when he answers your question the second, third or fourth time. It's about getting to know people with the ultimate political aspiration in this country.
Eighty minutes from now, the first votes will be cast for the next President of the United States of America.
The fun and the visits from candidates may be coming to an end here, but this is just starting to get interesting.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
