More Race For The Nomination Stuff...

If you don't already know, McCain took New Hampshire yesterday in that primary. The big surprise was Clinton pulling off a victory, when earlier in the day, people were thinking Obama was going to pull off a victory, possibly even in the the double digits. That was pretty stunning.

McCain winning New Hampshire wasn't a huge surprise. Romney was starting to build-up steam following his performance on the debates, particularly Sunday night's. However, nobody was really expecting him to close that gap over such a short span of time. I did read somewhere that it's a possibility that with so many of the independent voters swinging between Obama and McCain, they might have fled the Obama bandwagon to McCain as a strategic vote because of the early anticipated blow-out of Clinton. That would explain McCain's ability to hold on and Clinton's upset, but that still seems implausible to me. So you're telling me that about 25,000 people had that same thought in mind yesterday? Not likely.

I think this is a really interesting take that Romney had mentioned following the close of the voting yesterday.

HH: Now Governor, this is not unfolding the way any pundit called it, certainly not the way you had hoped it would unfold, but also not the way your opponents hoped it would unfold. John McCain’s down from 60% eight years ago. You’ve dealt with a lot of situations where tactics and strategy has to evolve. How are you doing that? Have you arrived on a central message for the next eight weeks?

MR: Well, there’s no question but that our message continues to be the same message, and it’s a powerful and connecting message. What’s happened that’s quite different is that we were anticipating that we had to win the first two primaries to go up against Rudy Giuliani, who was way ahead in the national polls, and who would have a commanding lead in Florida. Well, now Rudy Giuliani’s no longer in the lead in the national polls, and it looks like he’s number four or number three in Florida. So the whole world is different than we thought, and it’s much more of an open process than we’d expected with at least three and maybe more Republicans all vying for votes. And I think it’s anybody’s guess as to exactly how this is going to turn out.

Here is the post by Hugh Hewitt. This is Hugh's analysis of what happened yesterday and some things to possibly anticipate coming up over the next couple weeks. This comes courtesy of the guys at Powerline. And if you're really interested on getting different takes, visit Real Clear Politics. What that site does is collect a number of different headlines from around the country and posts them in one spot. It's really a great resource for this kind of thing. If you look at this morning's headlines you'll notice that pretty much everyone has a different take on what's going on, probably because nothing has really gone the way anyone has expected. The only thing that does seem clear is that the race on the Republican side is wide open. I thought this article from the Wall Street Journal was pretty interesting. This New York Times piece gives some good analysis on the next primary which will be next week in Michigan.

If you're a Romney supporter, these are some reasons you can feel encouraged:

• He has won more delegates than any other GOP candidate
• He has a strong base support among Republicans in the electorate - more so than any other candidate. Huckabee's Iowa support drew largely from Evangelicals, and McCain's win in New Hampshire was buoyed largely by Independent voters. Michigan will be the first open race between more than just two candidates. Florida will probably be the most open of all the races. At least in the beginning.
• Romney still has more resources and better organization than any other candidate nation-wide. In a race that is more and more looking like a war of attrition, his ability to outlast could be the determining factor in winning the nomination.

Nevertheless, the guy still has to pull out a major victory at some point. If it doesn't happen in Michigan, or at least in Florida, it may not happen at all.

On the other side, I think Clinton's victory yesterday is good for the GOP. Now there is no clear front-runner and Obama and Clinton will have to fight tooth and nail to get that party's nomination. That means dirty fighting for both sides which will really expose each candidate's weaknesses even before the race for the Presidency is on. There was some speculation that the moron sexist voters who should up at a Clinton rally Monday could have been plants from the Clinton camp to generate more support among women. I thought that was interesting.

In any case, this thing is a long way from being finished.