Last week, I spoke with the lively publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, Joe McQuaid. In anticipation of tonight’s debate at Saint Anselm College, we discussed each of the Republican candidates — warts and all. Perhaps most interesting were his comments on the mama grizzly, Sarah Palin.
“I don’t think she’s in the race at all,” he tells National Review Online in a phone interview. “And considering the way she’s dealing with New Hampshire, I would tell her that’s probably good that you’re not going to be in the race, lady, because you’re not dealing with the people the way New Hampshire people like to be dealt with — which is actually to talk with them.”
I remind McQuaid that he’s previously argued New Hampshire is quirky and some candidates have won the state without ever setting foot in it: Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1964, for example. “Those are the exceptions that prove the rule,” McQuaid replies. “But which one of us in this piece is going to suggest Palin is the new Eisenhower?”
McQuaid also had a quip about Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.), though I didn’t include it in the piece: “He’s a twitter, not a quitter.”
Read the whole thing here.