McCain the front runner?

Is John McCain the front runner in the Republican race? Will conservatives vote for him? Will Rush Limbaugh stop foaming at the mouth over McCain. Will the endorsements of Rudi and Arnold make any difference?

McCain certainly did very well in Florida.


He won in a closed primary thus proving he could win with only Republicans voting. And it really wasn’t all that close. McCain won by 5 percent over Romney who spent a ton of money. The win was very important to McCain because he won all of Florida’s 57 delegates. The delegate count is McCain 93, Romney 49, Huckabee 40.

Coming up on Super Tuesday are several states that have winner take all primaries. The Republicans have winner take all primaries. The Democrats have proportional representation in all of their primaries. In some some places for the Democrats this is done by Congressional districts. If a district has 4 delegates a candidate needs to get over 60% of the vote to win three delegates (this is how it was explained on CNN). It would be possible for a candidate to get two delegates if they got just 41% of the vote. So for the Democrats each and every district is important.

Anyway back to Super Tuesday for McCain. There are four winner take all primaries that you can be fairly confident he’ll win. New York (101 delegates) New Jersey (52) Connecticut (30) and Arizona (53). That’s a total of 236 delegates in just four states. He will probably win in California (candidates secure three delegates for each of the state’s 53 congressional districts they win in the primary) and Illinois. In some of the southern primary states Alabama, Georgia and Missouri he’s second behind Huckabee. In Tennessee McCain is first place in the polls. The question has to be asked where does Romney win or more to the point where does Romney pick up delegates to match the numbers that McCain will get.

McCain and Romney went after each other again in their debate last night:

The continued tension between Romney and McCain clearly frustrated the other two participants. “This isn’t a two-man race,” Huckabee said. “You want to talk conservative credentials? Let me get in on that.” Later he begged the questioners to turn the “spigot” of questions back on for him and Paul.

The debate was a reprise of the nasty week of campaigning in Florida and offered a preview of the week to come, as McCain and Romney skip across the country, holding rallies in airport hangars instead of town hall meetings and airing television commercials in some of the nation’s biggest cities.

Tuesday should be a really interesting night.