"""On the Democrat side, Bradley had already flamed out and Gore basically had the Rat nomination already sewed up""
Gore had it sown up after IA??? Hmmm interesting...it wasnt until his NH defeat that Bradley had flamed out....Again NH isnt the state it was in 1980...I could see Newt winning NH but only if McCain, Guliani and Mitt stayed in.
As the sitting VP president Gore would have had to have worked pretty hard to NOT get the nomination. Bradley had already shown himself to be an inept candidate, even before he lost Iowa. The New Hampshire primary was almost a formality for Gore in 2000.
As for your irrelevant point about NH not being the state it was in 1980...so? What state hasn't changed in the past quarter century? However, having living here since 1994 and having been involved in conservative activist politics on and off during the years, I feel I have a decent grasp of what the conservative activists are thinking, as well as the more rank-and-file GOPers. Certainly I have more direct knowledge about what's going on in the state than some newcomer to these threads who shoots his mouth off with little to back up his comments.