Recently in McCain Category

OBAMA -- The Audacity of Graft.  You've GOT to check out the photo and copy included with this one.  If McCain isn't a complete incompetent he's going to nail Obama for tit-for-tat sweetheart deals involving Tony Rezko, involving money from corrupt London based Iraqi businessman Nadhmi Auchi.  Bob Novak has a recap of the story here.

Hillary Clinton's reputation for tough and intelligent politics is one of the great laughers in history.  Obama would be bloody road kill on the way to the White House if Hillary Clinton had any real intelligence or stones.  You don't attack a man for his third grade writings or his silly costumes abroad -- you cut his throat where he lives, which is on phony ethics, phony "unity" claims,  phony colorbindness, and phony protestations against corruption.  Hillary reveals herself as a complete political incompetent for failing to chop off Barack where he lives and breaths.

Is McCain similarly incompetent?  He often seems to be.  But in Florida he showed he's willing to put in the knife where he needs to, Sunday School ethics be damned -- something his father and grandfather might well have understood.

If I were McCain I'd of had those Tony Rezko spots up yesterday -- and I wouldn't be waiting for Chris Matthews or the NY Times to put me in the White House.

DID JOHN MCCAIN screw a sexy blond lobbyist, exchanging political favors for sexual favors? -- the New York Times just wants to know.  Of course, the timing of this story couldn't have anything to do with the fact that McCain has just wrapped up the Republican nomination and a true leftist after the NYT's own heart is about to take him on in the race for the White House.  The timing of this decades old "where's the story?" news "report" couldn't have anything to do with that. 

Hey, John McCain, welcome back to the GOP.  You bought yourself ten years of friendship with the Main Stream Media with your incessant trashing and betraying of the Republicans and the conservative movement.  But the party is over.  The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic of your relationship with the leftist press has officially come to its end.  You "my friend" are now enemy number one in the MSM.  And you know what?  You're on your own. 

Good luck, John.

UPDATE:  Tom Maguire the "everything you need to know" analysis.

Quote of the Day:  "If a newspaper is going to run stories about lobbyists who claim they have special relationships with members of Congress, it will run out of ink."

UPDATE II:  The New Republic has its insiders report on the battle at the New York Times to get rumors of a John McCain sexual infidelity published in its pages.  One thing is certain, executive New York Times editor Bill Keller isn't lying when he says the McCain story "met all of our standards."

I CALLED THE WASHINGTON STATE Republican Party this morning and party officials say that they will let people know the actual vote results and who actually won the Republican caucus later this afternoon.  You can read the results when they are posted here.   The shenanigans the GOP elites tried to pull this weekend are the kind of things that leaves citizens cynical about the politics.  Saturday night the party was saying the final results would be tallied Sunday morning.  Yesterday afternoon they were saying the vote would be counted Monday morning.  Now more delay.  The party only had about 13,000 voters.  The problem can't be the adding up of these small numbers ...

UPDATE:  Pudge at Sound Politics weighs in on "the meaninglessness of the Presidential preference tally" in the Washington caucuses.  Well, yes.  Not so significant in terms of what happens next in the arcane workings of the Washington caucus process, but significant in terms of the most important thing this election season -- the perception race.  The nationally important perceptions race and the fresh air of sunshine into the process are the only reasons to release any result from the caucus --  and the party botched it.

UPDATE II:  There is a gigantic Red State / Blue State divide in the state of Washington.  Eastern Washington is traditional Barry Goldwater / Ronald Reagan country -- libertarian and socially conservative.  Western Washington is much more Country Club Republican territory.  Well, the votes that weren't counted in the Washington caucus were Eastern Washington votes -- and the Red State Easter Washington Republicans are as mad as hell:

I am a Washington State precinct committee officer in one of the rural areas of our state.

There are a number of things wrong with the WA caucus.

One is that me and a number of people from my community took valuable time out of our Saturday to go and caucus.  Then, when I call the state party office I am told that the declaration was made even though they did not get the official results from "some people" in the rural areas who may be sending the results in via snail mail. 

Aaarrgghhh... I said... That would be me!

So my question to the party was whether or not we should have even shown up to caucus?  I mean I expect that the good folks in Seattle would dearly love to have us show up on the second Tuesday in November.  Considering we are likely to have a knock down drag out rematch between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregiore.

It is this kind of treatment by the party establishment that has fueled the suspicions of the grass roots folk such as me.

Add to those suspicions the generic dislike for John McCain and you have a "not good" scenario potentially building for the general election.

Disclaimer: I am a former Fred head who became a soft Romney voter who ended up caucusing for Huckabee to send a message to the McCainiacs that he still has work to do.  And for what it is worth, my precinct did not include ONE McCain vote.  And we were not counted by Luke Esser?

Also this:

I happen to be a Precinct Committee Officer for one of the rural counties that are NOT included in that "McCain victory" poll that Esser is touting.

I called the party office today and the kind secretary said that all the votes had not been counted and that some of the rural counties rely on snail mail to deliver results. WELL DUH! I told her that I happen to be one of those rural precincts and can say that in MY precinct there was not ONE vote for McCain.

I can also say that I know for a fact that one of the other precincts, that was caucusing with us, had at least one other voter who said she would never be able to vote for McCain. She is a former mayor of a town here on the east side of the cascades.

Then to ad insult to injury the "official" website of the state party had on their front page a "news" story that declared "Sen. McCain Wins Republican Precinct Caucuses in Washington State."

I asked the communications director how one can "declare" anything if all the votes have not been counted? Unless of course you folks on the west side of the state really don't care to count those of us on the east side at all.

Hey Luke Esser perhaps you don't really want us to vote in November either? Care to go the general election alone?

The bloggers blog is called NW Republican.

WHAT'S COMING.  200,000 voted in the Democrat caucuses but only 13,000 voted in the Republican caucuses in the state of Washington.  And if you look closer, in the neighborhood of mere 3,000 soles in the state were motivated enough lend their support to John McCain.  With Barrack Obama it was more like 140,000.  Just as a measure of motivation and enthusiasm that's a 43 to 1 advantage for Obama over McCain.

MCCAIN IS A REALLY nasty character -- that's the personal testimony of a Capital Hill staffer.

JOHN MCCAIN ran in California as the "BUILD THE WALL" candidate.  He had prop. 187 Gov. Pete Wilson calling every Republican in the state telling us that John McCain was the best choice to secure the border, stating flat out that McCain's first priority as President is to build a wall on the border, stop the inflow of illegals -- and only after that would he sign any legislation which deal with the problem of the 20 million illegal aliens already here. 

We'll see.

What I've come to believe is that John McCain is a deeply dishonest guy who'd would sell his kids to be President.  I don't trust him.

At this point I'm ready to back Mike Huckabee.  He's the most likable and personable guy in the race, his ideas aren't that wacky, and he's no less prepared to be President than anyone else in that office over the last 30 years.  Really.  A lot of the conservative attacks on Huckabee I've thought are unfair.  He's clearly not great on crime, but his record on taxes and spending must be put in the context of running the state of Arkansas.  And Huckabee's criticisms of the President have been valid and warranted.  Truth is a pretty good defense.  Bush has been living in a bunker, and the American people know it, and there sick of it.  Huckabee will not be a bunker President.

The evangelicals who dominate the new Republican party in the party's new base -- the South -- want one of their own in the White House.  And let's face facts.  Given the choice most of them are not all that comfortable voting for a Mormon.  We may still have time to switch horses and keep that horses ass we call John McCain off the top of the ticket.  I say we do it.

UPDATE:  Mark Levin has a good post explaining why Republicans will never united behind John McCain.  Levin suggests that party activists turn their attention to the House of Representatives.  I'd only add that the best aid anyone could give to House Republican candidates would be to get Huckabee on the top of the ticket.  There would be no better way to motivate a large segment of the Republican base to turn out at the polls in November.

WHAT'S HUCKABEE'S MOTIVATION? He's promoting John McCain every chance he can get.  He's kicking and cutting Mitt Romney like an Arkansas chicken in a cock fight.  And he doesn't have a chance of winning the GOP nomination -- Huckabee is in single digits nose-to-nose with Ron Paul among Republican voters who are not Baptist and/or evangelical.  And the chances that John McCain will put Huckabee on the ticket are almost zero.  Huckabee doesn't gain McCain any values voters, and he costs McCain voters in McCain's favored "independent" demographic.

So what is Huckabee's motivation?  Well, it's not like Huckabee has been hiding his motivation.  Again and again he's said that what drives him in the campaign is the thing most important to him, and again and again he's said what is most important to him is his theology.  And he's used that theology to drive an identify-politics campaign that has attracted baptist or evangelical voters and almost no one else.  But what no one will talk about but which is evident if you look at the exit polls is that Huckabee has used his theological identity politics as a wedge issue against Mitt Romney.  Those who tell pollsters that it matters a lot that a candidates shares their same religion vote predominately for Huckabee -- and the person who almost never gets their vote is Mitt Romney.

It wasn't an accident that Huckabee spoke about the supposed Mormon belief that the Devil is Jesus's brother.  It's not an accident that Huckabee has repeatedly identified himself as the leader of Christians in the race, leaving unsaid what doesn't need to be said among many Baptists and evangelicals -- that Mitt Romney is a leader in a religion of what they believe are non-Christians.

So Huckabee has told us that his theology drives his campaign, he's used his theological identity as his chief means of acquiring votes, and he's used his theology directly against Mitt Romney.  So now with Huckabee not having a change of being President, and with Huckabee clearly campaigning against the strong-on-values / strong-on-judges candidate Romney and in favor of the weak-on-values / weak-on-judges candidate McCain, you've got to ask yourself what's going on here.  And although no one wants to talk about the elephant in the middle of the room, I think we should talk about it. 

John McCain is a knife-fighting, divorced fly-boy, but a conventional Christian.  Huckabee is comfortable with that.  But Huckabee has issues with the decent, hard working, good values, nice guy Mitt Romney. You've got to ask yourself what is up with that.  And then when you recall the "Jesus and the Devil are brothers" stuff and Huckabee's keynote participation in the Salt Lake City convention of the Baptists which focused in part on the theological rivalry with the Mormon religion, a glimmer of things falling into place begins to emerge.

When it comes to assisting McCain and blocking Romney, it may be about what Huckabee has been telling us all along it's about.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when or if McCain with the aid of Huckabee takes the nomination from Romney, we should all be clear why and how this happened.

One thing to note -- in the West where people know and are comfortable with Mormons, and where people historically have tended to be more tolerant than in the rest of the country, you don't see the anti-Mormon vote so much among the Baptists and / or evangelicals.   I'd be surprised to see McCain win a single state out West today besides his own state of Arizona, and he might even lose that.

NOW IT'S PAT BUCHANAN endorsing Hillary Clinton over John McCain.

McCain is running on a platform that says your jobs are not coming back, the illegals are not going home, but we are going to have more wars. If you don't like it, vote for Hillary.

If the anti-Bush voters put McCain on the GOP ticket, my Republican wife intends to pull the lever for Barack Obama, just on the relative like-ability factor alone.  McCain's mean and nasty old man personality rubs my wife the wrong way.  If it's McCain against Clinton, neither of us know what we'll do.  Maybe sit out the election or write in Romney.

MCCAIN IS RIDING the negative-on-Bush vote to the Republican nomination -- and someone besides PrestoPundit finally notices.

NOW IT'S MARK STEYN making the case for Hillary Clinton -- if John McCain takes over the Republican party.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES John McCain bolts the party if he doesn't get the Republican nomination?

I JUST TOOK a recorded call from Cindy McCain, who urges me to vote for her husband.  Here are the chief talking points in the McCain phone push in California:

1.  John McCain is the guy who really, really wants to secure the border, and he's the one who you can count on to get the job done.  And what's more, he'll do that first before anything else!  (You've got to admit John McCain has balls the size of coconuts, and a capacity for horse hockey that that Bill Clinton must admire.)

2.  Cindy and John have two children currently serving in the nation's armed forces.  (Unstated but implied -- Mitt Romney's five sons never served the country during this time of war.)

3.  John McCain is the reliable anti-abortion candidate.  (No mention of McCain's true feelings about Judge Alito.)

4.  John McCain believes in freedom.  (Unstated -- just not the 1st Amendment kind.)

UPDATE:  Romney's robocall includes audio of Bill Clinton explaining how Hillary Clinton and John McCain agree on almost everything and get along so well together.  The phone call also mentions McCain's teamwork with Ted Kennedy and other Democrats on Congressional legislation.

PATTERICO ON the John McCain myth:

It's my view that McCain only seems electable because of his media image, which will collapse once the country actually gets to know him in the general election.

For example, the clueless boobs at the Los Angeles Times endorse McCain with this comment:

But the Arizona senator's conservatism is, if not always to our liking, at least genuine.

They obviously haven't bothered to read their former colleague Matt Welch's book on McCain, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. Welch demonstrates that McCain is far from a straight-talking maverick and Man of the People. Rather, he is a condescending elitist, prone to bending the truth to a remarkable degree, and unnervingly trusting in the power of Big Government to change our lives for the better.

For a taste of Welch's views of McCain, go here for a recent article by Welch on McCain's re-emergence. Keep in mind: these are not the rantings of some disgruntled conservative. This is the informed opinion of a libertarian with some lefty leanings, who knows more about McCain than 99.9% of the people in the country:

Here's the funny thing about independent voters: They still love John McCain, think he's a straight talker. No matter how many times he claims to run a positive-only campaign on the same day he releases an attack ad; no matter how many ways he violates the spirit of his own campaign-finance legislation (do yourself a favor and Google "The Reform Institute"); no matter how unconvincingly he stammers his way through wanting to make permanent the same tax cuts he eviscerated in 2001 and 2003; no matter how inaccurately he slimes Romney and others for insufficient support of "our troops"; no matter how many immigration bills bearing his name he now opposes; and no matter how many times he confesses to manipulative, ambition-driven lies in his own damned books, independents still come out for their maverick -- 42 percent of them in open-primary South Carolina, and 39 percent in New Hampshire.

.. Many voters will eventually learn that McCain's image is nothing like the reality. People who know nothing of McCain except his image are finally going to sit down and watch a debate. At that point, a lot of them are going to say: "Holy crap! That's the guy I thought I liked?!" The antiwar crowd will finally realize he makes George Bush look like Neville Chamberlain. And everyone will see McCain's smug condescension, born of a background of elitism and privilege. It will manifest itself in that self-satisfied mockingly contemptuous grin that he can't hide.

THOMAS SOWELL GIVES new meaning to the expression "rips him a new one":

We have been hearing for years that Senator John McCain gives "straight talk" and his bus has been endlessly referred to as the "Straight Talk Express." But endless repetition does not make something true.

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker.

There are short, blunt lies -- and he told a big one on the eve of the Florida primary, when he claimed that Mitt Romney had advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq ..

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming president of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

Read the whole thing.

FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER DENNIS HASTERT believes that John McCain has "allied with Democrats" as part of an effort to change the image he earned for his participation in the sleaze of the "Keating Five" scandal:

Hastert, who retired from Congress in November of last year, said McCain changed after the Keating Five .. "He was gearing up for a run for the presidency in 2000 so he had to .. clean up his image."  .. He contended that on agenda items under the Republican-controlled Congress, "it just seems like everything we did, John was someplace else .. He was against us on tax cuts and his form of immigration reform was to open the gates and let everybody in." Asked if he considered McCain a conservative, Hastert said, "In my opinion, he is not.

UPDATE:  Mark Levin talks with Hastert about John McCain:  "there are skeletons in that closet."

ANN COULTER makes the case for voting for Hillary Clinton over John McCain, if it comes to that.  Watch her make the same case on the Hannity - Combs show here.

JOHN MCCAIN WAS IN FAVOR of benchmarks for withdrawal from Iraq, before he was against them.

Seems McCain was also in favor of switching to the Democrat party, before he was against it.

And of course, McCain was in favor of giving amnesty to illegals without securing the borders, before he was against it.

And, in a bit of a switch, don't forget that McCain was against appointing strict constructionist judges like Sam Alito, before he was in favor of it.

The key thing about all of these things is that McCain has been dishonest with the voters about his true opinions and true record on these matters.  It's not about flip-flopping, it's about deceiving the voters.

"ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN."

Alternative headlines: 

"PRIVATE JET COMMUTER ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN"

"LIBERAL ACTOR ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN"

"STATE RUN MEDICINE ADVOCATE ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN"

"HUMMER OWNER ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN"

"BIG SPENDING LEFT COAST GOVERNOR ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN"

STEVE SAILER isn't satisfied learning that John McCain overwhelmingly attracts the large GOP "negative on Bush" vote.  He wants to know why.  Here are some suggestions:

1. As much as many Americans don't like war, even more of them don't like losing wars.  John McCain has been Bush's biggest critic on how to fight this war.  And the success of the surge and the firing of Rumsfeld seems to have proven him right.  Steve and others might not see it that way, but many GOP voters do.
2. McCain is winning the "fiscal conservative" vote by wide margins because he's the anti-Bush when it comes to spending and fiscal sanity with the budget.  The one thing that has been missing from the "fiscal conservatism" of the Bush / Club for Growth / WSJ / Sean Hannity "fiscal conservatives" has been, well, fiscal conservatism.  McCain has credibility on restraining spending, cutting pork, and closing the budget deficit gap.  Bush has a record on fiscal indiscipline that makes LBJ look like Calvin Coolidge.  In Florida, about half of all GOP voters believed controlling the budget deficit was more important to them than the promise of future tax cuts (a rather pie-in-the sky Bush-like promise if you look at the required spending outlays already on the books, including the millions of Baby Boomers now moving out of the tax producing workforce and onto the tax sucking Federal dole.)
   
3. Since December, when most people first started paying attention, John McCain has been running hard as the "secure the borders first" candidate.  This may seem bizarre to those who closely follow politics all year round, but polls clearly show he's fooling large segments of voting population, pulling in significant percentages of those who reject amnesty and want to control the border.

I'll add more later.

THE NEGATIVE ON BUSH vote continues to power John McCain to the Republican nomination.  If we take a look at the Florida exit polls, we see that Romney handily defeated McCain 35% to 31% among GOP voters who have a positive opinion of the Bush Presidency.  But McCain crushed Romney 2-1 among those voters who are not satisfied with the Presidency of George W. Bush.  This huge negative on Bush vote provided McCain with his comfortable victory margin over Romney in Florida.

And one has to think this has something to do with it:  Florida Republicans are split just about 50-50 over whether reducing the budget deficit is more important, or if additional tax cuts are more important.  Romney narrowly edged out McCain among voters who see tax cuts as more important, but McCain topped Romney by a full 15 percentage points among those who identify the budget deficit problem as more important.

Romney also had problems with the Hispanic vote and the amnesty for illegal aliens vote.  Romney narrowly edged McCain among white voters, but lost to McCain more than 3-1 among Hispanic voters.  Romney also edged out McCain among voters who are opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens, but McCain's 2-1 edge among voters who favor amnesty gave McCain more than the margin he needed to win Florida.

If Romney is going to win the Republican nomination he must find a way to pull in the significant segment of Republican voters who have a negative opinion of the Bush Presidency, and who are now turning to McCain as their hope for a significant improvement on Bush's performance in the Presidency. Closely tied to this, Romney must attract the large segment of  Republican voters who are more concerned with the nation's enormous and growing budget deficit than they are with George Bush-style tax cuts promises, in the face an out of control political class and a retiring baby boom generation.  Finally, Romney needs to do much better among Republicans who are opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens.  During the campaign McCain has represented himself as a "control the borders first" guy, in contradiction to everything he's ever done on the issue of amnesty for illegal aliens.  This false pose has won McCain a big slice of the anti-amnesty voters, a vote Romney must take back if he is to win the GOP nomination.  And no where is this more true than it is in California, the biggest delegate prize of them all.

JOHN FUND GAVE US the article on Mike Huckabee which crystallized the Governor's reputation as a tax and spend big government "conservative".  Now Fund has another reputation making article out on Senator John McCain and McCain's Supreme Court problem.

UPDATE:  McCain pushes back hard against Fund.  The record seems to confirm McCain's side of the story.

IT'S CLEAR WHY JOHN MCCAIN hates Mitt Romney.  John McCain very badly wants to be President.  But he's helped develop a system where it's incredibly difficult to run a competitive campaign for President without great personal wealth, Romney has that wealth, and he's using it to beat McCain to the dirt using ads which lets people know how McCain has opposed many of the things they believe in.  It's the one loophole that McCain has failed to close in his campaign against free speech and the 1st Amendment.  So what is driving that campaign?  First and foremost what we've learned about the Senator is that if you're getting information about John McCain, McCain believes John McCain has the right to be delivering that message, and not anyone else.*  We've seen this attitude from the race in 2000 against Bush, we've seen it in his arguments against free speech on the part of independent political action committees during the debates over McCain-Feingold, and we've seen it in his repeated anger against candidates who expose his record on television or in the Presidential debates.  It's essentially the attitude of a ship's captain who won't brook competitive feedback from the crew.  And it's a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy and the American system.

The John McCain we've come to know is a man with an enormous belief in his own right to shut up or angrily denounce people who speaks "truth to power" when it's his own position of power which is being contested.  The problem with Romney is that he has too much money to shut up -- and McCain can't hardly stand it.  It just isn't fair that that only thing that keeps him from rightly being shut up by McCain supported campaign finance law is that fact that he has more money than everybody else.

And in a less extreme form, I think a little bit of the same thing lies behind many of the candidate's evident resentment of Mitt Romney.  But self-financing by the very, very rich is a constitutionally protected part of a legislative regime handcuffing free speech and the 1st Amendment, a scheme which all of them have supported, and I think these candidates need to grow up, stop whining, and live with it.  If we unbound the 1st Amendment and let free speech once again rule the land, all of these candidates would have more than enough money.  The fact that they don't is their own fault.  Again, here's my advice for John McCain and the rest.  Be a man.  Stop whining.

*Of course, if the McCain message is coming via McCain friends in the MSM, well, John's willing to make an exception for that.  Kind of him, isn't it.

DEBRA SAUNDERS -- the problem with Romney.

And Michelle Malkin on McCain -- "This is cynicism on steroids with a speedball chaser."

JOHN MCCAIN: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated [about economics]".  That was McCain speaking with Stephen Moore in Nov. of 2005, at the Senator's office in Washington, D.C. In the same interview McCain identifies former economics professor and U.S. Senator Phil Gramm as his leading economic adviser on economic issues.  Here's the whole incident as recounted by Moore:

On a broader range of economic issues, though, Mr. McCain readily departs from Reaganomics. His philosophy is best described as a work in progress. He is refreshingly blunt when he tell me: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." OK, so who does he turn to for advice? His answer is reassuring. His foremost economic guru is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (who would almost certainly be Treasury secretary in a McCain administration). He's also friendly with the godfather of supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer.

The always reliable "Huffington Post" re-writes history, and transforms this incident into a recent meeting with editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, one in which Sen. McCain is made to say he "doesn't really understand economics."   A pure fabrication, and a rather nasty one at that. Here's the opening paragraph from Sam Stein's article "Short on Economic Understanding, McCain Brings Phil Gramm to Meeting" in the Huffington Post:

At a recent meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted he "doesn't really understand economics" and then pointed to his adviser and former Senate colleague, Phil Gramm - whom he had brought with him to the meeting - as the expert he turns to on the subject, The Huffington Post has learned.

The incident was confirmed by a source familiar with the proceedings of the meeting.

Perhaps no surprise this -- Paul Krugman has picked up the fabrication and he's spreading it via the New York Times.

John McCain did in fact have a recent meeting with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal -- but note well that Phil Gramm wasn't present, and John McCain didn't tell anyone that he "doesn't really understand economics".

I'VE TALKED ABOUT HUCKABEE'S role as McCain's wingman in South Carolina.  It looks like Romney may have his own wingman in Florida -- assuming current polls are reliable and Romney is surging in Florida (a perhaps risky assumption).  Giuliani is smacking McCain hard like only a New Yorker can do with hits like this.  If Giuliani were a bit more conservative he'd be my pick for the nomination -- we need a Republican leader of temper and caliber to lead the charge against the left.  If Rudy stages a late comeback and helps crush McCain in Florida, I wouldn't be unhappy.

TO HEAR THE WASHINGTON POST spin it, you'd think it was a contest between John McCain and Rush Limbaugh in South Carolina -- and that Rush and the conservative movement had suffered a serious defeat at the hands of Senator Kennedy's favorite bill co-sponsor.  The WaPo certainly makes it sound like McCain had swept the Republican vote in South Carolina, in some grand turn-around from his 2000 race against George Bush.  But the facts -- ignored by the Post -- do not bare that out.  It turns out McCain lost the GOP vote to Huckabee.  In other words, he came in 2nd among Republicans, squeaking out a win with a plurality of Democrat and independent voters.  So how big was this McCain win, compared with 2000?  Not big at all. Some might even say piddling:

In 2000, running against George W. Bush and the entire Carroll Campbell machine in South Carolina, John McCain got 42% of the vote, and 240,000 votes out of 573,000 or so cast.

Tonight, he got 33% of the vote in a field where his top challengers--Romney and Giuliani--aren't even running, and 135,000 actual votes. If just the same people who voted for McCain in 2000 had voted for him today, he would have won 50+% of the South Carolina vote. That would have been truly impressive.

Instead, John McCain LOST the support of 100,000 people--and he's the winner?

Compare those numbers with the anti-Rush, pro-McCain dish served up by the Washington Post:

though McCain failed to persuade many of the old Republican power brokers, he wrapped up the Republican establishment where it counted most, South Carolina. His win Saturday underscored how different McCain's campaign has been this year compared with eight years ago .. "I think the people of South Carolina are getting to know John McCain now, a little more than they know those folks [e.g. Rush Limbaugh, et al] anymore," longtime McCain aide Mark Salter said Saturday night of the senator's old nemeses.

In fact, McCain failed to "wrap up" the Republican establishment -- former governor David Beasley endorsed Huckabee and Sen. Jim DeMint endorsed Mitt Romney.  And of course, McCain lost the Republican vote to Huckabee, and he did poorly among conservative voters, especially very conservative voters.  McCain wasn't wiped out in South Carolina, as we was in 2000, but he wasn't a titanic winner either, as the Washington Post would like you to believe.

I'M WITH ROSS DOUTHAT.  This is a two man race -- Romney vs. McCain.  Mike Huckabee can hardly get a vote outside of the "evangelical" population, and his real role now is wingman for John McCain. Giuliani, on the other hand, is crashing around the country.  Hunter is out, Fred will be out.  Paul is a non-factor.  Enough summary, here are some details other pundits have missed:

• John McCain lost to Huckabee among GOP voters in South Carolina.  McCain has yet to carry the Republican vote in any state.  Think about that for a minute.
  
• John McCain continues to do extremely well with those having a negative feeling about the Bush Presidency -- without the huge margin McCain got from these voters he would have been a loser in South Carolina
• Half of all South Carolina GOP voters believe that illegal aliens should be deported and they should not be given amnesty -- 25% of those folks voted for John McCain, who ran as the anti-illegal immigrant candidate in South Carolina.
• McCain again swept the geezer vote in South Carolina -- if the vote were up to those under 60 John McCain would have lost.
  
• John McCain is despised in much in his home region -- the West -- where he's been utterly crushed twice by Mitt Romney.
• Mormons were one-quarter of the vote in Nevada -- and 95% of them voted for Romney.  I'm thinking that's better than John Kennedy did with Catholics in 1960.
  
• Eight percent of Nevada GOP caucusers were Hispanic -- Romney defeated McCain almost 2-1 among these voters.
• Mitt Romney has a real Mormon problem.  The only part of the country he is taking by big margins are historically tolerant Western states where most folks have neighbors who are Mormon.  In large numbers "evangelical" Christians are voting on religious grounds. They explicitly tell pollsters that the religion of a candidate matters to them, and they are voting for Huckabee, McCain, Thompson -- just about anybody but Mitt Romney.  Romney gets half of the votes from the "born again" as he gets from voters of other religious identification -- a pattern you see with no other candidate.
• Huckabee continues in his failure to pull much of a vote outside of the "evangelical" population.  In South Carolina Huckabee was tied for 3rd place behind even Mitt Romney among voters who were not self-identified as "born again".
  

Nevada exit poll results are here.  South Carolina exit polls are here.

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BYRON YORK ON MCCAIN, South Carolina and the do-over vote.  Of course, if you're a regular PrestoPundit reader, you've been aware of this factor for some time now.

MCAIN LEADS ROMNEY 24% - 17% in California says Rasmussen.  The significance of this comes from the fact that we're already voting out here in California  --  I cast my ballot yesterday by mail, others are voting in person at polling stations across the state.  Voting doesn't begin in California on Super Tuesday -- it merely comes to an end here on Super Tuesday. 

Here's some good news for Romney: "Sixty-three percent (63%) of Romney's supporters are certain they will vote for him. That's a far higher level of commitment than any other candidate enjoys. Just 45% of McCain's supporters are that "certain" along with 54% of those who support Thompson, 45% of Huckabee voters, and 36% of Giuliani fans."  I'd say that is open room for a Romney upset in California.  Early voters are more likely to be "certain" voters -- and conservative talk radio here in California is already going to work on McCain, beating him up especially as both wrong and dishonest on the most important issue facing California, illegal immigration.

Giuliani has dropped off a cliff here in California, falling from far out in front to 5th place at only 11% support, with only 1 in 3 of these "certain" they'll actually vote Giuliani.   If you don't have support on the influential talk radio stations, it takes major money to move opinion in California, and I very much doubt Giuliani will have the sort of cash required to do much to move his numbers.  Guiliani is perceived as weak on illegal immigration, and  he's getting little support on the radio or from conservative opinion leaders.  A Schwarzenegger endorsement might help Guiliani, but all bets are on a McCain endorsement from Schwarzenegger at some point just before Super Tuesday.  Why Schwarzenegger has held out this long is anyone's guess -- unless the snark about Schwarzenegger impending switch to the Democrat party is actually in the works.  With Schwarzenegger even dumber things have happened.  My  working assumption is that Schwarzenegger is trying to set up a  Senate seat for himself, so whatever would best serve that end is what you'll find him doing.  I'm not sure how that plays in terms of the Presidential primary.  Maybe no endorsement at all in the primary would be what is best for Arnold.  If it is, that's what he'll do.