New Hampshire has spoken. As a result, my two favorite candidates, Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie, are out of the race. I never expected either of them to win the GOP nomination, but that didn’t prevent them from being my favorites. The fact is that I am voting for anyone who garners the nomination, and that includes Mr. Trump.

Still, I can’t help thinking that, overall, the candidates who have dropped out along the way — Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Fiorina and Christie — stack up better than the survivors — Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jim Gilmore and Jeb Bush.

What is truly bizarre about New Hampshire — aside from the fact that it is demographically unlike the rest of the United States, that there are a great many counties in the nation that have larger populations than the entire state and that one of the overriding issues for the voters is the number of deaths resulting from heroin overdoses! — is that Democrats and Independents can vote in the GOP primary. It’s almost enough to make Iowa’s caucus system seem rational.

The best thing about being a Republican this time around is that even Trump makes more sense than the two loons duking it out for the Democrats. In her pathetic attempt to hang on to the black vote, Hillary has to pretend that Barack Obama has done a splendid job while at the same time try to convince the voters that there is a tremendous difference between herself, a Progressive Democrat, and Bernie Sanders, a socialist calling for an end to capitalism.

If she weren’t such a pathetic excuse for a human being, one could almost feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. I mean here she is, urging young women to use her head as a battering ram to crack through the glass ceiling and she’s losing their votes to a cranky old Jew posing as Santa Claus.

It occurs to me that Bernie’s physician is going to have his work cut out for him. Being as demented as Sanders is and always has been, how will anyone be able to diagnose Alzheimer’s if and when it kicks in?

Some people wonder why single women vote overwhelmingly for liberals, but not I. The reason is that whereas Catholic nuns marry Jesus Christ, seeing in Him their savior and protector, single women are like secular nuns, who see the federal government in that role.

Whereas the founders tried their best to limit the power of Washington, D.C., single women want it to be all-powerful, in a position to provide them with everything they’ll ever want or need, including contraceptive pills and abortions, the belt and suspenders of sexual life in America.

When decades ago, Gloria Steinem declared, in the name of feminism, that women needed men like a fish needed a bicycle, women laughed and applauded, declaring not only their independence from men, but a rude dismissal of the entire gender. But in the years since, women have trooped out to vote for men the likes of Carter, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama and now Bernie Sanders. So it appears they’re happy enough to eschew bicycles, so long as the federal government is around to do their pedaling.

It seems we have increasingly become a nation that likes bullies. On the right, it explains why so many Republicans are flocking to Trump, who has switched sides so often that even flip-floppers and turncoats regard him as unreliable. On the left, it explains why they are constantly seeking to expand the power and influence of the federal government. And if you think the government isn’t a merciless bully, try not filing a tax form by April 15th. Don’t be fooled; the feds are only pushovers when it comes to ISIS, Russia and Iran.

It strikes me as very odd that a major political party has nothing better to offer the voters than a multi-millionaire who lambastes Wall Street in public, while pocketing their bribes in private; and an elderly curmudgeon who vows to improve the lot of the working man, but who has never held a job outside of politics. While other kids were delivering newspapers, shoveling snow or mowing lawns, young Bernie was in his parents’ basement plotting the second American Revolution.

I know that Chris Christie, while making his last hurrah in New Hampshire, scored a TKO over Marco Rubio by pointing out how canned some of his responses were. But after all these months of campaigning, they’re all repeating their favorite lines. Between the televised debates, the town halls and the endless questioning by the media, how could they not parrot themselves?

But of all the multitude of robotic lines, the one I hope I never hear again is the one referring to a candidate’s “ground game.” The thing I hate the most about being told that a candidate has a good or bad ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, is that it reminds me of the fact that a great many voters are either dumb or simply disinterested when it comes to electing Obama’s successor.

What does it say about a citizen that his or her vote can be swayed at this late date by receiving a phone call from a perfect stranger who happens to be a bought-and-paid-for political shill?

Apparently these know-nothings are too busy alphabetizing their canned goods or watching reruns of “Joanie Loves Chachi” to bother checking out the candidates on their own, but their votes count as much as yours.

Still, as disheartening as that is, worse is the fact that the Democrats continue to wage war against photo IDs being required at the polls, pretending its only purpose is to disenfranchise blacks. And yet blacks don’t seem to have a problem proving who they are when it comes to boarding planes, renting cars and apartments, buying beer and cigarettes or showing their photo ID to traffic cops.

Only when it comes to voting do they suddenly become stateless, homeless and nameless, according to those promoting crooked elections.

Instead of hearing the usual chatter from candidates about what they’ll do on their first day in the Oval Office, which involves everything from scrapping ObamaCare to defeating ISIS, things that might actually require more than 24 hours, I’d like to hear someone pledge to have Congress pass a law requiring a photo ID in order to vote in federal elections, and vowing to sign it before the ink has dried.

Philosophically, I am a conservative. That means I want a federal government limited to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, with all other matters left to the states and the individual. It also means that I want the government to do what it, alone, is authorized to do. That definitely includes protecting us from invasion, either from those attempting to sneak in across our borders or by taking advantage of a visa process that’s as porous as Swiss cheese. It also means acknowledging that the Statue of Liberty is just a statue; it’s not an open invitation to Islamic terrorists and Eurotrash looking to sponge off the American taxpayer.

Being a conservative also means that, as Americans, we do not accept a submissive role to unelected bureaucrats, be they agents of the EPA or the IRS.

Finally, it means that we have a military so powerful that our foes will be reluctant to test our resolve, but if they decide to test it, they’d better put their affairs in order because they will quickly rue their rashness.

But I also understand that as a conservative, I am a member of a small minority. Whereas America used to be center-right, it has devolved over the past quarter century into being center-left, so, for practical reasons, I am a Republican.

That means that it is more important to me that Democrats lose than that any particular Republican win. That, in turn, means I will not support the most conservative candidate in the primaries unless I’m convinced he stands a very good chance of winning the general election. So far as I’m concerned, symbolic acts should be left to liberals. Let them be the martyrs for a change.

It doesn’t take an oracle to realize, one, that if a candidate can’t win the majority of primaries when he is running against other Republicans, he certainly can’t win a general election when, for totally inexplicable reasons, Democrats and Independents are allowed to vote; and, two, only right-wing traitors stay home on Election Day and allow liberals to take control of the nation and the Supreme Court because they are so politically myopic that they see no difference between socialists and those whom they arrogantly dismiss as RINOs.

For my part, I will always prefer to settle for half a loaf if that’s my only alternative to a left-wing crumb.