John McCain Stands At The Top. (Finally) I'll See You All In Pennsylvania

McCain Wraps Up The Nomination

Senator John McCain locked up the Republican nomination for president Tuesday night with wins in all four contests: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont. All by very large margins, which put him over the top of the 1191 delegate thresh hold. Now McCain can rest and relax for a little bit while he watches the Democrats destroy themselves.

McCain's smallest victory over former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee was 51%-38% in Texas. He was dominant in every state and because of all of this we were not surprised to see Huckabee bow out gracefully last night.

"The apostle Paul wrote that, I fought the good fight; I've finished the race; and I've kept the faith. And I believe tonight that one of the things that we will be able to say is not only that we fought the good fight and finished the race; we'd like to have finished it first, but we stayed in until the race was over."

Huckabee gave a strong conservative speech; similar to the one Mitt Romney gave at CPAC last month when he bowed out of the race. Huckabee is setting himself up for a run later, 2012, or a TV gig. He was by far the most interesting candidate, the funniest and the easiest to listen to.


"Pennsylvania Is The New Iowa"

Those words coming from Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway. Senator Hillary Clinton had a great evening last night; she won Ohio (and it wasn't that close) Rhode Island where she was expected to roll and Texas by 4 points. These victories for Clinton make the campaign a whole new ballgame. Clinton praised the people of Ohio and America in her victory speech.

"Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we're just getting started. More and more people have joined this campaign, and millions of Americans haven't spoken yet. In states like Pennsylvania and so many others, people are watching this historic campaign, and they want their turn to help make history. They want their voices to count, and they should. They should be heard. So, please, join us in this campaign."

The Clinton Camp is now looking forward to the upcoming contests in Wyoming, Mississippi, and most importantly Pennsylvania (The Keystone State, home of WaWa, Cheesesteaks, and the Roethlisberger... yea its a fat state, er Commonwealth) They are saying that this is now a horse of a different color. As of right now it is still unclear how many delegates behind Clinton still is but we do know she is at least a little bit closer to catching Obama. One thing that still has yet to be decided is the caucus in Texas, which, as of this moment with 36% of precincts reporting Obama holds a slight edge over Clinton 52%-48%. At the end of the day Obama could still win the most delegates in Texas because of the two-step system.

Senator Obama gave another very nice speech in San Antonio, he thanked the people of Vermont who voted overwhelmingly for him (60%-38%) and he talked right at some of the tactics the Clinton Campaign and some conservatives had used in the recent weeks.

"If I am the nominee of this party, I will not allow us to be distracted by the same politics that seeks to divide us with false charges and meaningless labels. In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon. San Antonio, I owe what I am to this country, this country that I love. And I will never forget it."

The Obama camp is playing the math game with the media, and themselves. They are quick to point out that Clinton would need to win something like 62% of the rest of the delegates in the last 12 states in order to catch Obama in the delegate lead. I think it is safe to say that neither candidate will receive that much of the vote in any race. So what will it come down to?

SUPERDELEGATES. I thought these dudes were going to be out of the picture but Obama just could not close the door on Clinton. Now it appears this campaign will go on until at least April 22nd, when PA votes but I would not be surprised if crazy things happen and Michigan and Florida vote AGAIN and we are all waiting around on June 3rd to see who Puerto Rico picks.

If you are a Democrat there are some things that should concern you:

1. The longer this lasts; the better it is for the Republicans.
2. Longevity leads to likeliness that a divide in the party is created.
3. Superdelegates are the spurn of society, if it takes Superdelegates to decide the nomination at the Democratic Convention in Denver in late August, we could see the craziest scene in politics since the '72 DNC convention floor.... Which interestingly enough is when the idea of Superdelegates was created, but it wasn't used until the mid-80s.

Super Tuesday Re-Cap, Romney is Out and McCain is the GOP Man.

Wow, what a night Tuesday was. Lots of crazy action happening. Overall I would say that things happened roughly how we all thought they would with one exception: Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee started of Tuesday with a bang when he won the West Virginia Caucuses defeating Mitt Romney by 5 points 52-47. This win was not without controversy though as Romney accused Senator John McCain of turning a "backroom Washington deal" where McCain supposedly told all of his supporters to vote for Huckabee to keep Romney from winning a state he had previously thought would be his. McCain denied this accusation but if you look at the facts this could be totally plausible. Bill Richardson was accused to doing this same thing in Iowa where it was thought that he informed his people to throw their weight behind Barack Obama. McCain needed Romney to falter on Tuesday in order to keep him at bay and to try to secure the nomination that night. If McCain (who did not receive the needed 15% to be viable) did tell his supporters to back Huckabee that would have been a very smart strategy, once Huckabee wins this state Romney is now already behind where he thought he would be on this day. I would not call this strategy (if it did occur, but I mean Come On!) devious as Romney's camp did, things like this can happen by themselves in a caucus based on the rules in a caucus, once this occurred you had a feeling that this probably wont be Mitt Romney's day. Huckabee's good day/night continued as he went on to win several Southern states including his home state Arkansas. Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama were the other states Huckabee won. This also contributed to Romney's Super Tuesday Failure because in order for him to keep up with McCain Romeny was going to have to win these southern states to keep the delegate count close. John McCain did just as well as we all thought, winning 9 states including the big delegate states of California and New York as well as the bellwether state Missouri. He now has 714 delegates and only need 1191 to secure the nomination.

All of this led to Mitt Romney suspending his campaign yesterday at the CPAC convention, a Conservative Convention where he praised heavily by all. Romney gave a great conservative speech and said he was stepping out because he wanted to give the party time to get ready for the General Election, he didn't want to "forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win." This has set up Mitt Romney as the Conservative Candidate for the next election. (be it 2012 if the Dems win or if McCain chooses to serve only 1 term or 2016) There has been much ballyhoo about how all of the Conservative talk radio hosts have hated on John McCain saying that he is not conservative enough for them and had been begging people to vote for Romney, these are the same people that backed candidates who had no chance at winning the nomination: Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, even Rudy Giuliani. All of these talk radio people waited too long to get behind Romney who they didn't have great things to say about earlier in this campaign and now it appears the GOP has their candidate, and he is not nearly the nominee that they had hoped for. I think this is a clear sign that these talk radio people: Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham (who introduced Romney before he spoke at CPAC) are losing their influence on the voters.

Democrats Duke it Out...Still Nothing New.

On the other side of the isle the Democratic race went exactly the way we had expected, 1600 or so delegates were handed out on Tuesday and Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama split them very fairly. Obama won the majority of states however 14-8 but Clinton won the big states: California, New Jersey, and New York. Obama took many of the caucus states, where good organizations and enthusiasm is needed in order to pull off a win. Obama won Minnesota, Colorado, Idaho, North Dakota, Alaska, and Kansas on Tuesday; he also took the primaries in Georgia, Alabama, Delaware, Connecticut (on of the few surprises), and his home state of Illinois where he defeated Clinton 2-1. Clinton took her two home states of New York and Arkansas. Obama supporters have been happy to point out that Clinton's victory in New York was much closer than Obama's in Illinois which they point to as proof he is indeed winning this fight and on a roll. Hillary did take California by a sizeable margin, which defied a number of polls that came out right before Tuesday that showed Obama tied or even leading in some cases in California. Overall we still don’t know who is going to come out of this race ahead, we will know more over the weekend and into next Tuesday where Primaries will be held in the "Potomac States" of Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. on the 12th. Caucuses will be held in Washington and Nebraska. Those caucuses look to be Obama country as well as Maryland and D.C given their Black population, Hillary will have a shot at Virginia but it appears she will be holding back and putting money into Ohio and Texas who will vote on March 4th.

A Look Back At The Weekend

The Caucuses and Primary this weekend provided no real insight to what is going on so far, but then did fill in some details.

Nevada: "Romney Rolls and Obama comes in 2nd but 1st in Delegates...?

Mitt Romney was the only GOP candidate to campaign heavily (if you could even call it that) in Nevada. This fact, coupled with the large population of people who are members of the LDS church gave Romney a very wide margin of victory, 37%. Ron Paul came in a distant 2nd with 14%(double digits just as was predicted here). Paul took something like 63% of the independent vote completely killing McCain's chances of a 2nd place finish to brag about. Romney's win gave him a nice lead in the delegate count, although it can be said that they are no matter this early in the race. The 1st primaries/caucuses serve more as momentum boosters and a test to see who can organize well.

Hillary Clinton's defeat is proof that she still has an advantage, at least organizationally. There was much bally-hoo made about Obama getting the Culinary Worker's Union endorsement, just as much was made of the fact that it gives those workers, who work in the Casinos of Las Vegas, being able to caucus in their workplace making it easier for them to attend. It needs to be said that these were considered "At-Large" caucus sights (read: More Important). Based on this the Clintons (Teachers Union who supported Clinton) complained and eventually there was actually a lawsuit about it, which didn't amount to anything. What is really interesting about this caucus was that in these "at-large" caucuses Hillary did very well. In fact she won Clark County, the County containing Las Vegas and 1.8 million of the 2.5 million that inhabit Nevada. She won the county 53%-39% and while that was happening Obama was winning the majority of all the other counties in the state. This leads up to the fact that Obama took more delegates away from Nevada, 13, than Clinton did, 12. As it has been happening the older you were the more likely it was you voted for Hillary and the opposite was true for Obama. Obama took the black vote by a large margin; he had 83% of their vote. If that carries on into South Carolina Obama and Clinton could each have 2 of the 1st 4 Primary/Caucus states on their way into Florida as well as Super Tuesday on Feb 5th.

South Carolina: McCain as a front-runner? Rudy still has a chance at this thing.

John McCain defeated Mike Huckabee in what could have been a loser goes home state. McCain beat Huckabee by 3% 33-30. The close race probably keeps Hukabee in the race but he will need a strong showing in Florida if he really wants to continue, he is running out of money. Fred Thompson came in a distant 3rd at 16% followed by Romney who didn’t campaign hard in South Carolina with 15%. McCain got 27% of the Evangelical vote, which is pretty surprising if you ask me. That is a nice chuck of that demographic. Some people are calling this victory for McCain proof that he can win a state that has a lot of conservative voters, he won 31% of Republicans to Huckabee's 32%. McCain still took the Independent vote however.

So John McCain and Mitt Romney seem to be sitting at the top of the GOP hill for at least this week. Florida is a big piece of the Republican puzzle and it seems that we will know a lot more after the primary in the Sunshine State. Rudy Giuliani is currently 2nd in Florida according to the Real Clear Politics poll. McCain leads with 23% followed by Rudy with 20%, Romney and Huckabee with 19% and 17% respectively. I could see Romney's numbers going up a bit after his Nevada win as well as McCain's and it will be up to Rudy to play it HUGE down in Florida if he wants any chance and getting the nomination. I will say this right here and now. If Rudy does not win or get at least 25% of the vote he will not win the nomination. Period. End of story. We'll find out in 8 short days.