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The Darkest Night: Six Sad Moments from the New Hampshire Primaries

Dreams were broken, delusions were ossified, and a man with a boot on his head beat a former governor.
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From The Boston Globe (Christie), Chip Somodevilla (Rubio), Scott Eisen (Bush), all from Getty Images.

While New Hampshire wasn’t the winnowing event that Republicans had hoped for, nearly all the candidates not named Donald Trump, John Kasich, or Ted Cruz had to spin some sort of gold from their middling-to-terrible performances. And how could they not, after dropping millions of dollars into the Granite State, disappointing their supporters, and being forced to soldier on to the next primary state? One can't spend the night being a sore loser, unless one is Ben Carson.

But even when they smiled in the face of defeat, defeat did not smile back, as last night’s biggest losses were compounded by heavy doses of irony, delusion, and a man wearing a boot on his head.

Trump Interrupts Jeb Bush’s Victory Speech

For once, things seemed to be turning around for poor, sweet Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor performed better than expected Tuesday night with a fourth-place finish within 0.5 percent of Ted Cruz and about 1,500 votes ahead of onetime protégé Marco Rubio. “We’re not dead yet!” he proclaimed during his victory speech—and then, in a fitting metaphor for the entirety of the last year, the networks all cut to Donald Trump, the man celebrating an actual victory.

Marco Rubio Finally Admits He Flubbed the Debate

For three days, Rubio decided to pretend that it was a deliberate decision to repeat the same talking points again and again during Saturday’s debate, blaming “the media” for blowing the perplexing phenomenon out of proportion. “I don’t care how much it outrages the media, I’m going to keep saying it: Barack Obama is trying to change the United States of America,” he said in an e-mail to donors. (He repeated that talking point three more times in said e-mail.)

But after his embarrassing fifth-place victory, Rubio stopped blaming the media and, instead, finally admitted that he had made a mistake. “I'm disappointed with tonight,” he said during his concession speech. “But I want you to understand something. . . . Our disappointment tonight is not on you. It's on me. I did not—I did not do well on Saturday night. So listen to this: that will never happen again.”

Ben Carson’s Wild and Crazy Knitting Party

The Guardian was the only press outlet to send a reporter to Carson’s party after the candidate announced plans to abandon New Hampshire and fly to South Carolina instead of sticking around to thank his supporters. The Carson-less after-party for the candidate, which “briefly peaked at about 50 people,” was so dead, Adam Gabbatt noted, that the bartender spent nearly the entire party knitting a blanket.

Chris Christie’s Campaign Hits a Wall

During her husband’s post-primary speech, reporters quickly noticed that Mary Pat Christie’s face was wet with tears, twisted into a painful rictus as he went through the motions of thanking his supporters for running a good campaign and saying he would return to New Jersey to consider his next steps. “We'll go home to New Jersey to wait," said the governor, the only candidate to signal he would likely drop out, despite out-polling both Carly Fiorina and Carson. "By tomorrow morning, afternoon we should know, we should know the vote total. That will allow to us make a decision about how we move from here in this race.”

Carly Fiorina Is “Very Encouraged” by Seventh-Place Finish

Winning a mere 4.2 percent of the vote was not enough to stop the former Hewlett Packard C.E.O., who, days after abandoning her own Iowa primary party, promised that she would not drop out of the race. “I’m convinced this is my highest calling as a leader, and you have given me the energy and the determination and wind at our backs to continue this great fight,” she told supporters Tuesday night. That wind at her back may be the equivalent of a tiny electric fan sold in tourist shops, but Fiorina, ever a study in resilience, declared that “we feel very encouraged.”

Vermin Supreme Beats Jim Gilmore

The former Virginia governor, who is actually still running in the Republican presidential race, lost nearly two to one Tuesday night to Vermin Supreme, a perennial joke candidate who believes in time travel, promises a pony for every American, and wears a boot on his head. Out of Gilmore’s 125 voters, only 10 showed up to his primary party afterward.