As we sift through the entrails of the New Hampshire results, we find . . . no, wait, Major General Stanley's daughters have a better idea!

"Let us shut our eyes, and talk about the weather."

"I still can't get terribly excited about this whole Iowa business, especially since almost everything about the caucus results is apt to be grotesquely misinterpreted and/or stretched wildly out of proportion."
--some blogcrank on the night of the Iowa caucuses

Of course it's conducting unbecoming a blogcrank to say "I told you so," but as a matter of fact, this one went on to write:

Already on washingtonpost.com we hear about how Senator Clinton has suffered a "stinging setback" (Chris Cillizza, who else?), and how Huckaroo "[rode] a wave of evangelical fervor to victory" (with, oh so predictably, no mention of his populist rhetoric).

Maybe. (I guess if enough people say Senator Clinton was stingingly set back, she was.)

So let's see if we've got this straight. Just yesterday we all knew that:

* The only question about that pathetic crybaby Hillary Clinton's campaign was when she was going to withdraw in humiliation.

* The leading question about Barack Obama's hold on the Democratic nomination was when he's going to be assassinated.

* On the Republican side, well, it's hard to find even "conventional" wisdom on the Republican side. But I remember something about Minister Huckaroo riding his evangelical path to glory. After all, if Willard Romney couldn't buy Iowa, what damn state can he buy? [Apparently neither Florida nor South Carolina-- in his own campaign's assessment; they stopped the expensive TV ads which haven't done him any good. When do you think he'll throw in his hat?]

And now it's, um, Hillary vs. McCain, is it?

McCain? That thoroughly discredited pile of whoremongering electoral protoplasm? Yes, but did you notice the, er, people he's running against?

(Okay, the part about Willard is playing out. But nobody suggested that the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are nuts.)

Sad old Tom Brokaw--who doesn't seem to have noticed that he's yesterday's noise, unless the problem is that he has--was reduced to opining that the commentariat might benefit from shutting up and just letting the voters speak. Those may not have been his exact words, but that was the spirit. This from the same Tom Brokaw who gabbed his way through every campaign silence his directors ever cued him into.

Which doesn't mean that our Tom couldn't be on to something. How about all those yammering heads simply--hmm, how to put this delicately?--shut their gosh-darned pieholes?

As it happens, I just happen to have a thought on the subject, prompted by those great Victorian philosophers W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Okay, I'm fresh from a performance of The Pirates of Penzance, where just this situation comes up. Okay, the situations don't have a lot in common, but still, I think the solution that Major General Stanley's female-chorus-size complement of daughters come up with for their problem might work for our yammering heads.

It happens after that newly decommissioned pirate (and fully commissioned "thing of beauty," as the sisters describe him) Frederic has intruded on the family's outing in the "wilds" of Penzance, and sparked some compassionate interest--just a matter of duty, of course--of the beautiful Mabel.

Sister Edith opines:

What ought we to do,
Gentle sisters, say!
Propriety, we know,
Says we ought to stay.
While sympathy exclaims,
"Free them from your tether--
Play at other games--
Leave them here together."

And sister Kate joins in:

Her case may, any day,
Be yours, my dear, or mine.
Let her make her hay
While the sun doth shine.
Let us compromise
(Our hearts are not of leather)
Let us shut our eyes,
And talk about the weather.

"Yes, yes," all the sisters agree, "let's talk about the weather."

And so here is my proposed New Hampshire primary report, Penzance-style:

"How beautifully blue the sky,
The glass is rising very high,
Continue fine I hope it may,
And yet it rained but yesterday.
Tomorrow it may pour again
(I hear the country wants some rain),
Yet people say, I know not why,
That we shall have a warm July."

Okay, bring on . . . er, aren't there a whole bunch of primaries coming up?


FINAL THOUGHT: WHAT WAS CHRIS MATTHEWS ON?

I'm reminded by a note from our friend Noah that I somehow didn't say anything about Christ Matthews' weird performance last night. No, no, weirder than usual! Usually his mash notes to the pols he's got one of his patented Chris-crushes on are at least sort of coherent. Last night he was mostly just babbling.

Remember when he had that sheet of exit-poll results, and was trying to read some significance into them? Like the peculiar number that 84 percent of voters who hate Obama voted for Clinton, which he seemed to think was so momentous--without even stopping to wonder how large a group we're talking about.

A number of people have noted that our Chris hasn't been looking well at all. Do you think he could have been on some kind of medication? Do you think he has any extra to share? (Gaunt as he looked, he seemed to be feeling pretty good.)

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