Rick Santorum fills the barn

Santorum held a town hall in The "Lawrence Barn" (no relation that I know of) this afternoon in Hollis, NH. Overflow crowd--though that's fairly easy to get in a barn.

My main take-away: If you just listen to their stump speeches, Santorum and Romney aren't really different. Main message of both: Obama 'doesn't believe in America,' they do.

Also interesting to see how Twitter condenses events and, in some cases, takes things out of context. A snarky quip attached to a candidate's one-liner is a tantalizing tease to other Twitterers, but it may not represent very accurately what the candidate really said--or what the crowd did. E.g.: One prominent Tweester tweeted that the crowd was "chanting 'Rick! Rick!" Not sure a half-hearted effort by a few in the standing-room only crowd to break the tedium (Santorum was over 30 minutes late) really counts as heartfelt chanting.

A final takeaway: There are A LOT of "political tourists" in NH. The warm-up guy asked for a show of hands of NH residents, and at most 40% of those in the crowd raised their hands.