After John McCain won Florida’s winner-take-all primary last week, the writing was on the wall and it was impossible to ignore: McCain was not only the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, he was already the presumptive nominee. With 21 GOP contests on Super Tuesday, and no one even advertising in these states as recently as last Thursday, the rest of the Republican field couldn’t stop McCain, they could only hope to contain him.
Looking at the final results, McCain didn’t completely dominate the Super Tuesday contests — at least, not as much as he could have — but the Arizona senator still had a very good day.
McCain won Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma.
Romney won Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Utah.
Huckabee won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
Democrats may distribute delegates based on proportion of vote totals, but most Republican contests yesterday didn’t. As a result, McCain not only won a plurality of the states, but by one count, he dominated the delegate count, too, and of today, will probably have about half of what he needs to tie up the nomination — leaving his rivals very little chance to catch up.
That said, McCain’s victory could have been big enough to end the campaign, and force Romney and Huckabee to bow out gracefully. The Arizona senator had a very good day, but probably not quite good enough to narrow the field to one.
For the last week or so, the dominant discussion from the Romney campaign was that Huckabee’s presence was helping McCain stay on top. That wasn’t just true yesterday, it was obvious enough that McCain should send Huckabee a fruit basket this morning. Exit polls showed that conservatives are still not at all comfortable with McCain, but just so long as the right is divided between Romney and Huckabee, McCain can (and will) continue to excel.
For his part, Huckabee seems to be enjoying his role as the guy keeping Romney down. He told backers last night, “You know, over the past few days a lot of people have been trying to say that this is a two-man race. Well, you know what? It is. And we’re in it!”
As for McCain, last night he seemed ready to give the inevitability strategy a chance, telling supporters, “Tonight, I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner for the nomination of president of the United States.” It wasn’t exactly subtle — McCain, who had carefully avoided the “f” word of late, was effectively telling Romney and Huckabee, “You gave it your best shot, now get out of the way.”
After seven victories, Romney is unlikely to get the message. “One thing that’s clear is this campaign is going on,” he said last night. “We’re going to keep on battling. We’re going to go all the way to the convention, we’re going to win this thing, and we’re going to get into the White House.”
Romney can try, but he desperately wanted a head-to-head match-up with McCain, and he won’t get one. Huckabee, who hadn’t won anything since Iowa and didn’t have any real resources to invest in Feb. 5 states, still managed to win five states and split the right elsewhere. Huckabee has no incentive to withdraw — indeed, the VP talk seems to be getting louder — and offers Romney very little room to maneuver.
The race for the GOP nomination looks increasingly over. McCain is right where he wants to be, and big wins yesterday only solidified his position. That said, while the upcoming contests may very well prove to be speed-bumps for McCain on route to the nomination, Romney and Huckabee did just well enough to force McCain to have to clear them.