Major is in West Virginia following the Dem’s race on the eve of the primary there and Carl is in Portland, Oregon as McCain unveils his plan to tackle Global Climate Change.
The March 4th primaries could put McCain over the top for the GOP nomination and Huckabee officially in second place for the 2008 GOP race.
These are HISTORIC achievements that to many seemed unimaginable last year. This VLOG and the FNC political unit however never once wrote off McCain last year when others did.
And while Huckabee went virtually unnoticed until last years Ames strawpoll, we identified him in January of 2007 as the darkhorse most likely to surprise.
Now McCain has 1014 delegates. He needs 177 to reach the needed 1191.
Huckabee has won 257 delegates. He needs 24 to best Mitt Romney who won 280.
McCain is expected to take VT and RI outright but neither Texas nor Ohio are winner take all - they are awarded proportionally by state senate and congressional district respectively. If Huckabee wins any combination of 8 Texas state senate or Ohio congressional districts he will win 24 delegates and thus go ahead of Romney. Undisputed 2nd place.
Huckabee will make no definitive statements Tuesday night about the future of his campaign. But look for news on Thursday when he returns to Little Rock. For weeks the Huckabee campaign has been doing an unofficial victory lap. The governor and his staff are delighted by his success and acknowledged status as a conservative leader who will now be well positioned to run again in the future.
Camp Huck is steering people away from veep speculation. The governor doesn’t expect an offer and insiders say if it came he should reject it. They think Huckabee’s future prospects are stronger making his own way rather than playing #2 to McCain.
McCain must first co-opt the RNC, and its a long complex process to take over the sprawling Bush admin national party apparatus. They are for now merely studying how past VP’s have been chosen and discussing how to come up with their own process.
Republicans all over the country are emailing and calling the campaign with their runningmate advice. While Huckabee would have us believe he is disinterested for now, that has never been the case for Mitt Romney.
Though Romney and McCain fought tooth and nail and grew legitimately angry with one another for exaggerated charges and counter charges throughout their year long battle, alot of republican grey beards think they make a good team on paper…..
The exit-polls gave McCain the lead - the actual precinct tabulations are coming in and reflect the same thing BUT Greenville and a few key upstate communities have not come in yet. Those areas are Chuck (Norris?) full o’ Huck votes.
Grab a snack, it ain’t over yet. The McCainiacs are pumped but just like one shouldn’t count chickens before they’re hatched, one shouldn’t count the Palmetto State in the win column until the major precinct returns are tabulated.
With a win in Nevada under his belt Mitt Romney now hopes to eliminate Fred Thompson.
Thompson needs to make third and though purely anecdotal, my SC precinct sources are seeing more Mittites than Fredheads…4th could be devastating for Thompson. Third would be a victory for Romney.
3 to 6 inches of snow fell around Detroit overnight.
GOP officials say light turnout so far is in keeping with forecasts of about a million votes cast today in the republican primary.
In 2000 when John McCain won, 1.3 million votes were cast- 17 percent of McCain’s votes were from indies and dems.
Light turnout and weather this time could mean fewer non-GOP votes. That could be good news for Romney.
If polls are to be believed ALL the trend lines are in Romney’s direction…albeit within the margin of error.
Romney went optimistic about Michigan manufacturing job losses saying he’ll lead the recovery. Initially McCain said those jobs are not coming back, he cast Romney as pandering. It wasn’t until a couple days ago that McCain too started cheering the recovery. If Romney wins, jobs and optimism V Realism V pessimism may be seen as the defining issues.
If Romney wins, the race in many ways, will be back to the beginning.
Thinkabout it; a Romney win evens the playing field. Huck, Mac and Mitt each have a “W” going forward.
If McCain wins we’ll have an indisputable frontrunner.
AGAIN…Mitt needs Michigan…McCain needs SC.
Tactically the best way to campaign in SC is to win MI.</
A McCain win slingshots him into SC where he has basically everything on the line.
As the most experienced ’security candidate” if McCain can’t win in SC where the military population is the nations highest per capita,,where (besides NH and AZ) might he win?
Conversely if Mitt can’t win in his home state, well, uh, what then?
RCP and ARG are both showing Obama and McCain with significant leads.
Follow this link to RCP page to see the trendline graphs…..
NH DEMS: Obama 36.9%, HRC 29.9%, Edwards 18.6%
NH GOP: McCain 33.9%, Romney 28.4%, Huckabee 11.6%, Giuliani 8.7%
American Research Group’s result can be seen at http://americanresearchgroup.com
The surveys were conducted on January 5 and 6. These are stand-alone samples, including callbacks.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton 39% to 28%, with 22% for John Edwards. This race is turning more on age than party as Obama leads Clinton 42% to 25% among voters age 18 to 64 (comprising 84% of the vote), while Clinton leads among voters 65 years and older 44% to 21% (comprising 16% of the vote).
On the Republican side, John McCain leads Mitt Romney 35% to 27%, with 12% for Mike Huckabee and 10% for Rudy Giuliani.
Obama’s Campaign Manager David Plouffe sent out an email Tuesday to “Interested Parties.” Basically that means it’s sent to a large group of reporters and it’s usually something juicy.
The email was entitled “Obama Gains Strength at Critical Time,” and was meant to be a look at how the campaign sees their candidate’s chances and/or how the campaign would like the press to interpret Obama’s chances in the early primary and caucus states.
Obama is doing well, the memo stated, because Clinton cannot unify and Senator John Edwards thinks that compromise is a “dirty word.”
In Iowa:
The Clinton camp is lowering expectations despite the fact that Iowa is “make or break for them.” Plouffe continued, “Which is why they will likely start planting signs, instead of questions, in Iowa.”
Of Edwards - “We see no signs of Edwards growing outside of his core base from 2004.”
In New Hampshire:
Recent polls show that Hillary Clinton’s lead has been cut in half. “Amongst voters who say they know both Obama and Clinton equally well, we actually take a lead outside the margin for error, and in our internal polling as well as public polling, among those following the race closely, Obama and Clinton are in a dead heat.”
In Nevada:
What happens in Nevada…..(no, guess again) will be influenced by what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire. “Therefore, what the turnout is and the pace of decision making is not fully known.”
In South Carolina:
Obama has not run a single ad in the state, the campaign noted, and yet he is still doing better than John Edwards, who won the primary in 2004. “We also believe that Edwards’ support in South Carolina, if he is no longer in the race or is a weakened candidate, is much more inclined to be supportive of Obama.”
The Eleven February 5th States:
“As best we can tell, Clinton only has a meaningful presence in California and New Jersey,” the memo read. “Edwards has no formal presence in the February 5th states.”
Here is Senator Obama himself, talking strategy at a Monday town hall forum in New Hampshire.
done
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