Mike Huckabee last night

We gathered at the Derryfield Country Club in Manchester (Side note: why isn’t the Derryfield Country Club in Derryfield? Wouldn’t that make more sense?) for the primary party for Gov. Mike Huckabee in NH.

Anyway … inside, of course, there was the usual press mob that accompanies such things. I spoke to a number of Huckabee supporters, and I’d like to tell you about some of them.

One is a student at St. Anselm College, he’s been working with ABC for the debates, and before that was a volunteer with the John Cox campaign. He first joined up with Mike Huckabee because of the Fair Tax, after John Cox dropped out. (I didn’t actually realize that John Cox had formally dropped out of the race … but apparently it had to do with the cancellation of the Iowa debate.)

Another is a student from Franciscan University, who is taking a year off from classes to travel around and volunteer with the Huckabee campaign. He hopes to volunteer enough times that he’s eventually picked up as a paid staffer as the campaign grows and contributions increase. Hopefully, he’s on his way to South Carolina any day now. If so, I hope to be able to have him put up on-scene event posts the way I’ve done for NH. But, perhaps, I’m getting ahead of myself.

As a group, we were watching as results began to come in. We all knew that we were likely to wind up in third place, so there was very little mystery in that. However, there was the excitement of wondering exactly how the numbers would work out.  To be perfectly honest, there were many of us who were pleased to see Sen. McCain take a commanding lead over Gov. Romney.

A group of us began to gather — a gentleman from Vermont and another St. Anselm student joined us.

We also took a great deal of delight in the low showing for Mayor Giuliani. None of us really bought his “I’m personally pro-choice, but I’ll pretend to be pro-life” claims.

It was almost 9pm when Gov. Huckabee arrived. He thanked the NH campaign staff and volunteers for doing a great job:

Gov. Huckabee congratulated Sen. McCain and Gov. Romney for their performance in the NH primary, and committed to moving on to South Carolina and Michigan. This, by the way, is a difference between Gov. Huckabee and the other campaigns. Gov. Romney, in need of a win, is expected to concentrate on Michigan and more or less turn South Carolina over to the others. Sen. Thompson was already in South Carolina before NH was voting. Gov. Huckabee, though, is fighting for both.

Gov. Huckabee spent the time thanking his volunteers, his staff, and all of us who came out to work for the campaign. He was gracious, and acknowledged the good work also done by the McCain and Romney campaigns. Obviously, if they beat us, then they must have done some good work, too. There was no whining or any such thing. An acknowledgment that they won this round.

As the party broke up, a crowd of supporters gathered around to shake Gov. Huckabee’s hand and get signs, books, or t-shirts autographed. The night was not really about disappointment. Remember, we were running in 5th or 6th not that long ago. A decent third-place showing is enough to show progress.

But, no, I’m not going to use the already-overused “comeback kid” phrase. I also think that we should consider an amendment to McCain-Feingold banning the phrase “comeback kid” with 15 days before or 5 days after the NH primary. But maybe that’s just me.