Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Aftermath

Well...here we sit. The day after Super Duper Tuesday and Huckabee is back in the thick of things. I must confess. My hope had waned. I was not looking forward to yesterday. I feared that it would be over for the best candidate in the race. However, a funny thing happens sometimes when you entrust actual voters with their responsiblity. The pundits and talking heads are proven wrong. Let's look at the results:

Huckabee wins WV, AR, GA, AL and TN.

Romney wins MA, UT, MN, MT, ND, CO and AK.

McCain wins CA, NY, NJ, CT, DE, MO, OK, AZ and IL

What can we glean from these results?

1) McCain is currently the official frontrunner....but look at the states he won. With the exception of MO, OK and AZ, these are faithful blue states. I seriously doubt that even Big Mac has the support to flip NY or CA in November. MO and OK were just narrowly won with Huckabee right on his heels in both. He won his home state of AZ but not by as much as he should have. It is clear now that McCain has the support of liberal and center-left Republicans in the blue states. But whither the conservatives??? Can McCain win without them?

2) Romney is dangerously weakened. Yes, he picked up seven states last night, but did anyone really do any campaigning in any of them? Looking at his wins as a whole, Romney wins when he has a family or religious connection or when he is the only candidate competing in a caucus. The only true primaries he has won are MI, MA and UT. Romney claims that Huckabee is damaging his campaign and taking away votes. But it seems that should be the other way around. More on that later.

3) Huckabee has risen from the political near-dead. Yeah, looking at the tally it seems that Huckabee can only win Southern states. And he has thus far, Iowa notwithstanding. But what is neglected is that for the most part, Huckabee is winning the conservative states. Not bad for a guy who is supposed to be a "liberal." Huckabee is strongest in traditional red states. As much as I would like to see a Reaganesque landslide in 2008, it is just not going to happen. We need to hold on to every single 2000/04 red state and pick up a couple of midwestern states too in order to win in 2008. Romney is a non-factor in the South. McCain pretty much is too, even with the SC win thanks to Fred Thompson.

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