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Chasing Santorum: The Muppet Takes Manch-attan, Signs Baseballs

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Dispatch from Boston Phoenix New Hampshire correspondent Dan McCarthy:

MANCHESTER – Rick Santorum wants to be like Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign New Hampshire Primary. He wants to compare his plight here against Mitt Romney to how the Gipper came around and whooped George H. W. Bush, who eventually conceded and accepted the VP nod. That's the message that he's pounding home across the Granite State, which he's traversing in a ho-hum neo-Scott Brown "I'm regular like you" Dodge Ram 5000.

PHOTOS: Scenes from Friday's New Hampshire primary campaign events

Last night's scene was staged for this, going down at a 75-year old Manchester restaurant named Belmont Hall that's buried like a deer tick in a residential nook on the east side of Manch. The place is a New England version of the Del Boca Vista rec room in Seinfeld; the Belmont Hall promise: “You won’t see any item on the menu that you can’t pronounce.”

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The press stampede moved right past even the most ambulatory retirees for pole position. Fifteen minutes before Santorum was scheduled to arrive, the room was already bursting at the seams with a cross section of the local electorate straight out of central casting: kids in loose fitting jackets and scraggly mops, AARP subscribers in comfortable white sneakers. Outside, a partition of picketers swarmed, while everyone's favorite performance artist-candidate and boot-hat wearer Vermin Supreme belched through his bullhorn: "Raise your hands and drop your pants Rick Santorum!"

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Just before the candidate arrived, a bald guy sporting a Santorum-y sweater-vest – who turned out to be Merrimack Town Councilor and sign-planter Bill Boyd – revealed to a grunting crowd that the fire department had declared the facility unsafe, and that more than 100 people would have to fuck off and wait out in the cold.

At first, nobody moved much. We couldn't really hear him very well; but as groans and snarky comments rose up through the crowd – something about 'organization'; something else about 'bullshit'; and even one "Ron Paul would have figured this out already" – Boyd announced that the party would be held in the rear parking lot. And in rolled Sir Richard.

When the door opened and Santorum emerged, throngs of supporters jammed the entrance snapping pics, while the more doltish ones cawed for autographs on everything Santorum and non-Santorum – lawn-signs, baseballs, and even glossy head shots of the man himself. Even if he loses to Romney on Tuesday (which he will), this is the closest this guy will ever come to rock stardom.

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Rick blasted his rehearsed and affable talking points – this is the most important election of your life, the power and glory of free enterprise, true conservatism, yadda, yadda, yadda. At least that's what I think. In reality nobody – besides maybe those lucky enough to squeeze into the half-moon scrum of journalists and cameramen – could hear a word of Santorum’s dulcet, confident tones.

Still things got interesting, as the parking lot set-up gave hecklers the perfect chance to dominate. One was utterly relentless, blurting out counters to any point Santorum made, and even causing a crowd member to politely chide him: "I don't support Obama but I wouldn't come to one of his speeches and disrespect him.” Another Santorum groupie later screamed in the protester's face: “SHUT THE FUCK UP.” This is the true hideous spirit of modern day campaign theater. Candidate talks. No real answers. Please pick me.

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At one point a little girl asked (or was coached to ask) if Santorum could share the biggest mistake that he's made, to which the candidate responded by repeating the question. At that point a heckler suggested "running for president," earning a few snickers from the small angry youth mob holding a requisite “Google Santorum” placard. Behind them stood a wall of Occupiers holding cardboard signs calling to get big money out of politics, while a handful of Ron Paul foot soldiers passed out tracts and info sheets to people who couldn’t care less.

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On the topic of the difference between him and his opponents, Santorum made sure to note his theory that the candidate with the most money doesn't always win. In actuality, though, that is the case. I'd been at an AM station out in Nashua earlier and heard the figures: for Perry, spending worked out to upwards of $500 a vote, while Romney spent $147 a vote, and Santorum spent about $20. The latter sounds about right if you consider how, the night after Iowa, Santorum’s main website crashed because their servers couldn’t handle the spike in traffic (just one of many of Santorum’s online problems).

That's where we are at this juncture in the circus of the century. Perry and Huntsman are likely to bow out. Romney is believed to have an edge because he has a house here and was governor of neighboring Massachusetts (even though no one likes him there, and despite it not helping him in 2008). And Santorum, the gay-bashing “Jesus candidate” who once claimed that the Massachusetts clergy sex-abuse scandal stemmed from Boston's cultural liberalism, is a motherfucking frontrunner. I guess in this kind of election – a big bummer for Republicans if there ever was one – that's what's needed to make things interesting enough for people to hold their noses and vote.

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