HOLLIS — We’re here for John Kasich’s 99th town hall in the Granite State, where there are, I’d guess, 150 voters present. If this is a typical crowd for a Kasich town hall that means about 15,000 people have seen him at one of these events.
That makes more of a difference than you might think. In 2012, 15,000 people would have represented about 6 percent of New Hampshire’s Republican primary turnout. Obviously, not every person who comes to one of these events will for Kasich because of it. But this is a state where retail politicking can make a difference.
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"Billy O'Reilly still doesn't pronounce my name right" –John Kasich-rhymes-with-basic
HOLLIS — We just pulled into the Lawrence Barn Community Center, a bucolic red A-frame that looks idyllic in a fresh blanket of snow. John Kasich will be holding a town hall here shortly. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was a prominent ticker counting up the national debt in real time (or at least purporting to), down to the dollar.
Jody Avirgan
I found it somewhat surprising since, as my colleague Andrew Flowers has written, talk of the federal debt and the deficit among Republicans has fallen out of favor — pretty markedly — since the last election cycle. Part of the reason, according to an economist Andrew talked to, is that it’s harder for candidates to get away with describing their tax plans as deficit-neutral, as Romney did four years ago. Other possible explanations are that the public just doesn’t care as much about federal debt these days, and that debt has leveled off in Obama’s second term.
