Initial Morning-After Thoughts

First off, it wasn't a bad night for Romney...but it wasn't as good as I hoped, either. The major disappointment was California. I'm not sure yet what exactly happened there and why the polls seem to have been quite wrong leading up to the vote yesterday.

Delegates are still being assigned, so we don't have solid totals yet, but it looks like McCain has topped 600, a little over half what's needed for the nomination. Romney will probably end up a bit shy of 300, with Huckabee around 170.

What that means in practical terms is that (1) it's certainly not over, and upcoming states voting this Saturday and next week will need to have their say, and possibly the states after that, but (2) it also means it will be very hard to stop McCain now. The reason still being: Huckabee. If all conservatives united now to support Romney, they most certainly could defeat McCain.

What's also clear is that there were regional differences in support. McCain primarily succeeded in the northeast, Romney in the West, Huckabee in the South, and there was a mix in the Midwest (Missouri, Illinois for McCain, Minnesota and North Dakota for Romney).

I'm still unsure what to say about the relative lack of Romney support in the South versus the strong support for Huckabee. I've already seen some differing opinions, but--although I hate to admit it--I think the likeliest theory is Southern evangelicals in too many cases still being swayed by their discomfort with Romney being Mormon. I'd like to be persuaded otherwise because this requires taking a dim (but realistic?) view of their motives. It's also possible that Huckabee's class warfare attacks on Romney's business background and wealth were a factor, or Romney's "Yankee manners" as opposed to Huckabee's "Southern style." In any case, I do respect the commitment many Huckabee supporters have for their candidate, but think it's unfortunate as they may be cutting off their nose to spite their face. Both before and after yesterday, I think there's no question realistically that of the two men, Romney has the decided advantage over Huckabee in being positioned to overtake and stop McCain.

There is a very strange dynamic going on between Huckabee and his supporters and McCain v. Romney. By all accounts, Huckabee's supporters are largely conservative, and in particular are social conservatives who care deeply about issues like pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-family, Supreme Court nominations, etc. And yet there can be little question that of the remaining Republican candidates, McCain is the most liberal.

So the question is...why in the world would Huckabee and his supporters be working so hard to block and criticize Romney to the benefit of McCain? West Virginia was a prime example, where McCain and Huckabee supporters joined to stop Romney, who otherwise had demonstrated that he had significantly more support than either of the other two. This threw the WV delegates to Huckabee. Had Huckabee supporters thrown in with Romney instead of McCain, they could have given Romney those votes, but more importantly denied them to McCain. Again, who is their real opponent here and why?

Even at this date, I would think it would be wise for Romney to talk to Huckabee about gaining his support. Certainly if the two combined their delegates and worked to stop McCain, there would be a reasonably good chance of their doing so.

I continue to be very turned off by McCain's tactics in this campaign. He lies, dissembles; he's turned taking too much offense into an art form. He gives very little solid rationale to his positions...the economy being a prime example where much of what he does say about it means little to nothing and tends to confuse rather than clarify. He is making classic "backroom" Washington-style deals, and you know that what success he's had so far is due largely to the "party powers" arranging things to his benefit, rather than McCain's own strength as a candidate. He still comes across to me as an grumpy pessimist rather than a forward-looking optimist.

So where do we go from here? I don't know yet though I'm sure things will clear up as the day goes on. Obviously it's not over, so we take the fight to the states voting this Saturday and next week. The residents of those states will have one more opportunity to stop McCain when we Super-Tuesday-ers couldn't quite do it.