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Buddy Roemer Will Keep Tweeting Until You Pay Attention to Him

As the Republican presidential primary race in New Hampshire reaches fever pitch, Buddy Roemer has a message for that state: Big Media is posing an existential challenge to the Granite State's political significance. And he's going to keep tweeting until that message gets heard.

The one-term Louisiana governor of the late '90s and early '80s has a soft spot for New Hampshire. It's where all is politically possible, where the underdog can hope, where McCain beats Bush. "By God," drawled Roemer by phone from Manchester this week, "that sounds American to me."

But the political churn that has seen candidates make their way from the edge of the debate stage to its center, largely through performances in prime-time, major-network TV match-ups, is "a threat to New Hampshire," Roemer says. It has lessened the importance of the state's retail, meet-and-greet, kick-the-tires presidential process, and left national media entities orchestrating New Hampshire's politics. Case study #1: Buddy Roemer's complete inability to get invited to those debates -- two more of which will be held in the Granite State this weekend.

Roemer's still hopeful that he might yet be invited to this Saturday night's debate in Manchester, a ABC-WMUR production. A recent poll had him tied at 3 percent in New Hampshire with Rick Perry. The neighboring Boston Globe has editorialized for his inclusion.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/buddy-roemer-will-keep-tweeting-until-you-pay-attention-to-him/250886/

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