Jay Reding.com

Mark Hemingway makes the case for a McCain/Romney ticket. To be honest, I think that’s the smartest choice for McCain—provided he can bury the hatchet. McCain needs someone who is young, appeals to conservatives, and can speak convincingly on the economy. Romney is someone who can deliver on all of those accounts. To be honest, Romney has always struck me as a bit of a technocrat, and the Vice Presidency is the best office for someone of that persuasion.

Romney’s biggest disadvantage is that he doesn’t really deliver any new states to McCain—but that seems less of a concern in modern electoral politics. For that matter, I don’t really see a McCain/Pawlenty ticket handing Minnesota to McCain either (although it’s within the realm of possibility).

What Romney really delivers is some straight talk on the economy—and the GOP needs to get an economic plan together or they will get creamed in the fall. Romney has the portfolio to do that—the man is a turnaround expert, and the US economy badly needs a turnaround. He comes with some baggage, but not enough to make him a distraction.

I don’t know if the McCain camp is serious considering Romney as a VP or not, but on a number of levels that may be one of his best choices to unite conservatives and to give him some much-needed economic credibility.

Word on the street is that Mitt Romney will be departing the GOP race today in a speech at CPAC. It would make sense for him to do so—he’s earned a lot of respect with conservatives, he’s young and he still has plenty of opportunity to have a bright political future. What he doesn’t have is an opportunity to get the nomination this year.

I think that if Romney remains the consistent conservative that he claims to be, he’ll get another shot at the nomination sometime down the line. A gracious exit and a promise to work with conservatives on making the GOP a party of conservative principles would do him well.

We’ll see what happens at CPAC later today.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey is liveblogging Romney’s speech at CPAC, so if anything breaks, he’ll be the first to have it.

UPDATE: “Out of love for America, I must stand aside.”

Romney is pure class, and from what I hear he’s giving a wonderful speech on why conservative values are important for the future of this country. This has to be a difficult moment for him, but he’s handling it with the sort of grace and principle that will ensure he will have a future in politics should he want it.

Secretary of the Treasury Romney? Vice President Romney? McCain needs the conservative support, and when it comes to fiscal matters Romney would be a strong choice.

UPDATE: The full text of Romney’s CPAC speech is available here.

I’m at my local caucus site, and GOP turnout is high–even I’m surprised at how many people are here. No clue as to which candidates are ahead, but Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the most presence here tonight. No overt support for McCain that I’ve seen yet. If my connection works, I’ll have more as things develop.

UPDATE: The precinct was packed! I’ve never seen turnout like this. The votes are being counted now. Results when they come in.

UPDATE: Looks like Romney is cleaning up. Romney 48, McCain 15, Paul 6, Huckabee 6.

UPDATE: Romney may have done well in my precinct, but nationally he’s getting creamed. He’s said that he will fight on, but it seems quite unlikely that he’ll have a path to the nomination after tonight.

The Caucus was absolutely packed. There were 75 people in my small precinct, and the auditorium with the general assembly was filled, and an equal number of people were waiting outside. American democracy is alive and well. The demographics were all over the place—young voters and old voters, men and women alike.

UPDATE: Ed Morrisey liveblogged the caucus…

As a side note, did Bill Richardson suddenly grow a beard or is it his twin from the mirror universe?

For the record, I voted for McCain. I’ll explain that later.

UPDATE: The Democratic race is as close as everyone thought it would be. I have a feeling that this could be leading to a brokered convention—which has to have Howard Dean screaming a “YEARGH!” of pain at the moment.

UPDATE: Minnesota has been called for Romney. Obama has also won convincingly against Clinton, with Obama taking 66% and Clinton 33% with 51% of the vote in. That’s a much bigger spread than I would have guessed.

UPDATE: 10:52PM CST: It’s looking more and more like Clinton will win California—but the results aren’t in yet. It’s also looking like McCain will win both Missouri (narrowly) and California (by a large margin). For once this election cycle, the pundits seem to be on track. McCain has a convincing lead with the Republicans, and Clinton is narrowly ahead of Obama.

McCain has a lot of work ahead of him in reassuring skittish conservatives. Appearing at CPAC is a good idea—but what McCain needs to do is be honest about points of disagreement and be prepared to talk about a shared conservative agenda. That means being much more reassuring about the sort of judicial appointments he’d make and standing strongly for an enforcement-first border policy. McCain needs the help of conservatives to win, and he’s got a lot of ground to cover.

Today is Super Tuesday, when 24 states vote in Republican and Democratic primaries. It’s the Super Bowl of the primary season, and normally the winner on Super Tuesday is the one who sweeps the nomination.

Except for this year.

On the Democratic side, I’m predicting a race in which both Hillary and Obama come out with enough strength to keep this contest going. The dynamics of the race are such that neither Obama nor Clinton have enough dominance to decide the contest one way or another. They both have entrenched bases of political support. They both have plenty of funds. They both aren’t going anywhere. Which means that the Democratic race will go one for some time after Super Tuesday, and states that have been virtual afterthoughts in normal election cycles may suddenly become crucially important. Not only that, but the Democratic “superdelegates” who are supposed to prevent another replay of the 1968 fiasco could end up tipping the scales to Clinton since those superdelegates are part of the old Democratic machine. That would cause a great deal of rancor within the Democratic Party.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are a deeply divided party right now, and Super Tuesday is only going to make things worse. Clinton will sweep the big states like New York and California. Obama will do well in the smaller states. At the end of the day, neither one will be out, and the Democrats will be fighting this one out for a while longer. I don’t think that the race will have a clear winner until April, and perhaps not even then.

On the other side, the race is clear. John McCain has the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney is positioning himself as the conservative alternative to McCain, but by the time you’re running based on what you’re not rather than what you offer yourself, the race has already been lost. Romney will carry a few states, but McCain will have a major sweep tonight. The reason why is simple: people want to back a winner. Romney hasn’t closed the deal, which means that even if he benefits from conservative backlash to McCain he just doesn’t have the support necessary to carry him over the top. McCain now has the bandwagon effect going for him, and the sheer momentum of that is enough to put Romney out. He can run beyond today, but unless he comes very close to McCain it would be just throwing more money after bad.

At the end of tonight when the dust settles, it will be a knock-out fight between Hillary and Obama on the Democratic side while John McCain will be a virtual lock for the GOP nomination. While McCain goes to CPAC and starts rallying his base, the Democrats will be involved in a bitter feud that may not end for a long while.

UPDATE: Open Left has an interesting piece on how Democratic “superdelegates” could up deciding the Democratic nomination. If that analysis proves correct, the Democratic race could get very contentious indeed.

CNN has official called John McCain the winner in the Florida primary, beating out Mitt Romney and giving himself a clear shot at the nomination. At this point, I think McCain will be the Republican nominee.

This marks the likely end of the Giuliani campaign, and already there are rumors that Giuliani will drop out and endorse McCain. That seems likely. Giuliani’s whole strategy was to wait out the early contests and pick up all his momentum in Florida. It was a risky strategy, and it appears to have backfired against him. Giuliani is a great leader, and I don’t think this is the end of his political career, but he didn’t show the kind of oratorical brilliance that I’ve seen from him on several occasions.

Mitt Romney’s strong executive experience doesn’t seem to have helped him in Florida. Romney has been a stalwart conservative in this race, but ultimately I don’t think he has enough momentum out of Super Tuesday to make it all the way. He’s certainly not out of the race, but he has a great deal of ground to gain in very little time.

Sen. John McCain is an American hero, a man of great personal integrity and someone who has always stood strongly on the side of his country. He often rubs conservatives the wrong way, and his “maverick” image causes much consternation—however, when it comes right down to it a man who agrees with us 80% of the time is better than a woman who represents the worst of American politics and a man whose great rhetoric is but a cover for a fundamental lack of real-world experience. We may have our issues with John McCain, but when it comes down to the basic principles of the party: fiscal conservatism, a strong national defense and strengthening the family, McCain has his heart in the right place.

Conservatives should make their voices heard, and they should continue to push Sen. McCain towards the mainstream of the party as they have on issues like immigration. However, if McCain gets the nomination—and it seems altogether likely that he will—conservatives cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. John McCain will cut wasteful spending in Washington, defend our troops in Iraq and our war against radical Islamist terrorism and will continue to be a strong voice for respecting human life, born and unborn. He may not be perfect, but he can lead, and we need true leadership in Washington more than anything else.

Byron York takes a look at why Mitt Romney won Michigan last night:

When rival John McCain said — probably correctly — that some of the state’s lost automotive jobs wouldn’t come back, Romney answered, “Baloney.” He also promised the auto industry $20 billion in federal investment, along with relief from mileage standards and burdensome employee health-care costs. Looked at from the voter’s perspective, one candidate, McCain, offered Michiganders little understanding — the Michigan equivalent of McCain’s opposition to ethanol subsidies in Iowa — while the other, Romney, promised to throw them a life preserver. The guy with the life preserver won.

The other big factor at play was that turnout was low with Democrats and independents—the people who gave McCain his victory in 2000. McCain needed a certain percentage of the independent vote to turn out last night, and they simply did not. Conservatives chose Romney by a large margin, and McCain didn’t have enough independents and crossover Democrats to make up for his losses there. (There’s also no evidence that that radical left’s plan to “throw” the elections by voting for Romney had any impact on the race—McCain still won crossover voters by significant margins.)

The problem is that while Romney’s campaign now has some steam, what does that mean for him down the road? Is Romney likely to pick up more support in South Carolina, where it looks like the race is between Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson? Will Romney do better on Super Tuesday? It’s hard to say, and the polls are useless as a predictor.

The two definite losers last night were pollsters and John McCain.

Once again, we also see how inaccurate political polling has been this year. The race was supposed to be close, and instead Romney got a convincing 9-point win rather than a squeaker. None of the polls in any of the states have been particularly accurate, it it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting any better in the future. Polling just doesn’t work—people distrust pollsters (especially Republicans), they increasingly use cellular phones rather than landlines, and polls tend to reflect conventional wisdom rather than real political trends. Even political futures markets have been doing poorly. How pollsters can change methodologies and tactics is a question for the future—what matters now is that polls don’t mean much of anything in predicting outcomes in this race.

John McCain also blew an opportunity to remain the frontrunner. His “straight talk” came off as pessimism, which is not politically popular. Even if McCain is right on the substance—big manufacturing is no longer the engine of employment than it was, thanks to competition and technological change, putting it so negatively was guaranteed to hurt him in Michigan. Yes, being a “straight talker” has it’s benefits: but only if you’re willing to give people some hope for the future. Had McCain said something about “taking Michigan into the 21st Century” or the like, he might have done better. McCain’s time as frontrunner may now be a thing of the past.

Looking ahead, the race is still a 5-way tie. It’s quite possible we could have 5 major contests with 5 different winners if Thompson wins South Carolina and Giuliani wins Florida. If so, it’s impossible to predict what the race will look like. Giuliani’s late-state strategy may have been a brilliant political tactic, or it may have been campaign suicide. We probably won’t know until Super Tuesday. This race is incredibly volatile on both sides—a real throwback to the days when party conventions matter. Not only could there be a brokered convention this year, it’s not inconceivable for both conventions to be brokered.

This race isn’t over on either side, and unless there’s a major upset in the dynamics of both, it may not be over after Super Tuesday either.

Today is the Michigan primary, a race that’s been overshadowed by New Hampshire and South Carolina, but one that could have some effect on the dynamics of the race. On the Democratic side, the only candidate who counts that’s on the ballot is Hillary Clinton. Because Michigan didn’t follow DNC rules, their delegates may not be seated at the convention. The only shock would be if Democrats voted “Uncommitted” over Hillary. There are no write-ins allowed.

On the Republican side, things are more interesting. McCain and Romney are neck and neck. If I had to guess, I’d say McCain will benefit from Democratic cross-over votes and narrowly defeat Romney. If Romney wins, he remains in the game. If Romney takes second again, he’s basically out of the race. This is Romney’s last chance to remain viable, and even if he wins he’s lost so much ground elsewhere that it’s only a matter of time for him.

It all will come down to the number of cross-over and independent voters, a fact not lost on Team Romney. Turnout will be low due to weather, which may help Romney and Huckabee. However, McCain won Michigan in 2000. He still has strong appeal there. I don’t think it will be a McCain blowout, but I think Mitt Romney’s days are numbered. I’m predicting a narrow McCain win.