By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots on americanpbn.com

As the candidates now focus on South Carolina and Nevada in preparation for Super Tuesday, what have we learned from New Hampshire?

Plenty.

And what we have learned is far more than just who won, who lost and who placed where. There is a whole lot more to the lessons of New Hampshire than that and to fully understand the landscape of the race for the White House, we need to do a dissection of what transpired in New Hampshire.

Trump won. We all pretty much knew that before the first votes were cast at midnight Tuesday morning. It came as no surprise even to those of us who are nauseated by Trump and his total lack of substance or any viable, articulated plan.

Bernie Sanders, the avowed socialist came in first on the liberal/socialist side of the primary and that too was a foregone conclusion as he was a light year ahead of Hillary in New Hampshire throughout the run up to Tuesday’s primary.

Hillary lost and whether or not she wants to, she needs to face the looming indictment music. Her self-imposed woes, the FBI investigation, the Benghazi investigation and her oft repeated denials, flapping in the face of reality like a spastic sea bass aren’t helping her win over voters. Hillary just barely, and I mean barely, on the back of six coin tosses, squeaked out a razor thin victory in Iowa but liberal voters just aren’t buying the crap she’s trying to sell them.

The real question Hillary has to face is whether Bernie Sanders will run her “socialist in the closet” campaign into the ground before the indictments are handed down.

Back to the Republican side of things…

Jim Gilmore lost, garnering only 126 votes but who really gives a damn? Gilmore isn’t even crawling, much less jogging or running in this race. He’s a name on the ballot, a man without a base, no ground game, no support and not a shred of a clue what he’s doing.

Take Gilmore out of it and Ben Carson finished last. For all the ballyhoo over Iowa, for all the snide and vulgar comments made on his behalf by Trump…Carson came in last in New Hampshire. Why…BECAUSE of all the ballyhoo and vulgar comments made on his behalf after Iowa.

Nobody likes a whiner and fewer people, it seems, like a whiner who relies on the sandbox bloviator to plead his case for him.

Carly Fiorina continued to fail to catch fire despite her clear vision and her debate strengths. Fiorina has ended her campaign but I hope she stands y because, as I have said before, she would make a prime VP candidate on somebody’s ticket.

That brings us to Chris Christie who, at the last debate before New Hampshire, jumped down Marco Rubio’s case and got up in his grill.

Here’s the straight up fact of that matter…Christie, who has hugged and walked arm in arm with Obama, who has appointed Muslim judges and who choose, in that debate, to give Obama the benefit of the doubt…claiming that all of Obama’s anti-American moves have been a simple case of incompetence…got the attention he wanted but not the SORT of attention he wanted.

Nobody with a working brain cell is buying incompetence as an excuse for Obama’s domestic or foreign policy decisions. As Rubio pointed out, maybe not in the clearest way he could have, Obama has done everything he’s done…on purpose. Obama said he would “fundamentally transform America” and that is exactly what he has tried to do at every turn. The voters saw through Christie’s desperate ploy and they let him know it Tuesday in New Hampshire.

In short…New Hampshire’s voters told Christie that if he couldn’t see, after nearly 8 years, that Obama is THE most anti-American president in our history and that everything from the Iran deal to the Obama doctrine of creating vacuums of power on the world stage to be filled with Islamist regimes to Benghazi and Obamacare…then he lacks the vision and clarity of thought to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.

Christie tried a shot across Rubio’s bow and managed to shoot himself in the foot in the process and has now, officially, limped away from the race and ended his campaign.

So what happened to Rubio?

Marco Rubio came in 5th. He was hoping for 4th…would have felt like a winner at 3rd but ended the night at 5th. Was it Christi that hurt him? I don’t really think so. Christi did more damage to his own campaign than to Rubio’s and Rubio, like a true leader, took full responsibility FOR his New Hampshire finish telling his supporters there, “This isn’t on you. This is on me. I had a bad debate and it will not happen again.”

No scapegoat, no begging bloviaters to brush the sand from his face. No excuses. No crying over spilled milk or lost opportunities. Just a guy taking responsibility himself.

Kind of refreshing isn’t it?

Okay…John Kasich and Jeb Bush…New Hampshire’s 2nd and 4th place finishers respectfully. How did they manage this after scraping the bottom of the barrel in one national poll after another for the past 6 months and after having one disaster after another on the debate stages?

There are a couple of things here that are not being widely reported in the 24/7 news cycles.

First…between the 2 of them…Bush and Kasich…they spent a total of $111 million dollars in New Hampshire. That’s a ton of scratch. Second…New Hampshire is an open primary state which means, you don’t need to be a registered Republican to vote for Republican candidates there. Here’s the breakdown of the voters from Tuesday’s Republican primary…only 55%, according to exit polling, who cast ballots in the Republican New Hampshire primary were registered Republicans. 42% declared that they were registered Independents and 3% declared that they were, in fact, democrats.

When it comes to middle of the road GOP candidates, especially in 2016, it appears that middle of the road voters, those with no real stance or any real hard and fast core voter values weighed in for candidates that matched their lack of core Conservative values.

And what of ted Cruz and his 3rd place finish in New Hampshire?

This may well be the most interesting statistic of all. While the 5 candidates Cruz beat out last Tuesday spent a total of $72.1 million dollars in the Granite State…Cruz only spent $580 thousand dollars and when you compare his paltry $580 thousand to Kasich’s and Bush’s whopping $111 million dollar New Hampshire campaigns…Cruz, by far, got the most bang for the buck.

Now then, let’s get back to some rather interesting stats regarding Donald Trump from New Hampshire’s primary.

Trump won…and won big, but who were his core voters?

Well, 45% of New Hampshire Republican voters, who voted for Trump, claimed in exit polls that their education level was high school or less. Only 20% of New Hampshire’s Republican voters who claimed a post graduate education voted for Trump but 38% of Trump’s voters said they never graduated from any college.

I’ll let you, the readers, make of that what you will and while you mull that over, let me get back to John Kasich for a moment.

A very interesting thing happened on the way to the New Hampshire primary. On Monday night, at a town hall meeting in Windham, New Hampshire, a woman asked Kasich why she should vote for him in the…DEMOCRATIC primary. Kasich did NOT correct her to tell the woman he was running in the Republican primary and instead, answered her question, regarding the Sanders/Clinton race THIS way…

“Isn’t that interesting.” “One of them’s too hot, one of them’s too cold, but I’ve got the right temperature.”

According to Kasich…he is the perfect compromise between the avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders and the in the socialist closet, Hillary Clinton.

Here’s the reality…New Hampshire is a very moderate state and it leans to the left so if Kasich and Bush, who spent a combined $111 million there want to appeal to the independents, there are only a small handful of states where that will serve them well and if Kasich wants to position himself somewhere between Bernie and Hillary, that’s his business but it won’t carry him out of South Carolina.

South Carolina, by the way, leans hard right and nearly 66% of South Carolina’s Republican voters identify as evangelicals which favors Cruz. Rubio has some ground to make up but look for a 3rd place finish in SC for him…quite possibly right behind Trump which should or would put the Senator from Florida right back in the thick of things. If Rubio can place 3rd, in South Carolina, thus knocking back both Kasich and Bush and with Christi not being invited to the next debate and mulling dropping out altogether after his bully-gone-nowhere New Hampshire performance…it is a 3 man race heading into Super Tuesday…the day when a whole lot of this will get sorted out.

One more very important point…while endorsements generally don’t mean a whole lot at this point in the race…Marco Rubio does have a distinct advantage in that regard heading into South Carolina. Rubio has the endorsements of both Tim Scott and Trey Gowdy. That will work for him there and, heading into Nevada…Rubio has that state’s former Governor…Bob List along with the state’s leading newspaper… the Review-Journal…having also endorsed Rubio.

If Rubio and Cruz put their differences aside, and tag-team against Trump in both South Carolina and Nevada…showcasing their plans, vision and substance against Trump’s genuine lack of all three…Super Tuesday is going to be very interesting…very interesting indeed.

REMINDER!!!

Don’t miss “Email Snacdals and Cover Ups…Part 2” TOMORROW right here in The National Patriot. If you missed part 1…Just click the link below!!!

Email Scandals and Cover-Ups…Part 1