Remember that old man Bush, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Dewey, Wilkie, Landon, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Hughes, Taft, T. Roosevelt, McKinley, Harrison, Blaine, Garfield, Hayes, Grant, Lincoln and Fremont all won Vermont.
What you are forgetting is that the political preferences of the population in a state can change over time. The electorate of Texas in 2011 is not the same as the electorate in 1976. The same can be said about Vermont and every other state.
Vermont and Maine wont swing towards the GOP in 2012 just because Mike Huckabee spends alot of time there, and reminds the voters that the people who lived there in 1936 voted for Alf Landon.
