Santorum boycotted the Maine caucuses which made it difficult to support him there.
He had a barely visible campaign in NH ... and then made a weird effort after his IA victory. His campaign manager was a foul-mouthed frat boy.
So yeah, did the Iowa conservatives get it right?
The problem with boycotting New England is that it gives another candidate a chance to gain momentum.
Giuliani stayed out of NH in 2008 and it opened the door for McCain to emerge as the alternative to Mitt. Bad strategy for Rudy. Santorum need to compete in NH in order to finish a strong 4th place and eliminate Newt.
Santorum failed in SC and FL. What was that all about? Lack of resources. He also skipped Nevada and finished 4th.
As a conservative, it is necessary to compete everywhere ... as best you can. otherwise, another conservative alternative will emerge out of the vacuum.
AFTER Florida Pete, after NEWT lost Florida by talking like Noam Chomsky vis a vis Mitt and Bain Capital, Mitt won Nevada, but Santorum won the next batch of contests and was either winning or coming in 2nd to Mitt in almost every contest thereafter, Newt was coming in 4th to Ron Paul half the time. Mitt could have still been stopped at that point, the CRYSTAL CLEAR thing to do was to back Santorum. But no, the Newticles wouldn’t have it even though their boy was burnt toast. F.ing retards.
Now, 2016, Rand Paul is Paultarian like his pappy, not a conservative, and I doubt he can win a general election, so why should a conservative in NH or ME vote for HIM? Just to stop the “establishment guy”?
It’s clear we need primary reform, NH should not be so important. In lieu of that, what to do, I don’t know. Maybe we need a major campaign to marginalize NH, conservatives would need to get their talking points in order and go on the air and talk about how the state is not representative of the GOP to mitigate any momentum the winner gets, really drive the point home. That would take, you know, team work, are conservatives capable of that? I don’t know, I doubt it.
I don’t know about a “boycott” (remember Rudy’s “brilliant” strategy to ignore the early contests and focus on Florida? lololololololol), be on the ballot no matter how long the odds are, if the end result of that is that “the establishment guy” wins it over Rand, so what? An early exit by Paul would the best thing for conservatives, so he stops siphoning votes that should go to an actual conservative who can win the election.