McCain, Huckabee Wins Deal Big Blow to Romney
By Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press
Feb. 6–WASHINGTON — At last, John McCain had to admit the obvious: The guy who loves to run from behind is the undisputed front-runner among the Republican presidential pack.
“I don’t really mind it one bit,” the Arizona senator told his supporters after scoring a series of key wins in the mammoth Super Tuesday voting, with victories stretching from a string of Northeastern states to the Midwest and onto the biggest prize of the night: California.
The biggest Super Tuesday in history — what McCain called “the closest thing we’ve ever had to a national primary” — clearly worked to his benefit as he added nine states to his total, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Missouri and his home state of Arizona.
In all, 21 states had Republican nomination contests Tuesday, and the only big surprise seemed to be the showing by Mike Huckabee, who hasn’t won since the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.
He took several states in the South, including West Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and his home state of Arkansas, where he served as governor.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Bloomfield Hills native, had hoped to court social conservatives in the South and somehow pull out a win in California.
He still said he plans to fight on.
“The one thing that’s clear is this campaign’s going on. I think there were some people who thought it would be done tonight but it’s not going to be done tonight. We’re going to keep on battling,” he said. MSNBC reported after midnight that top Romney officials would be holding “frank discussions” today about the future of the campaign.
Romney took contests in his home state of Massachusetts and in Utah, where fellow Mormons helped him and he is remembered for helping to turnaround the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. He also won contests in Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and Minnesota.
By the end of the evening McCain, whose campaign was considered all but dead several months ago, owned a sizeable lead in delegates for next summer’s convention.
“Without McCain getting everything he absolutely needed to get tonight, the next best thing was to have Huckabee instead of Romney win some of these key states,” said Bill Ballenger, who publishes the Lansing-based newsletter Inside Michigan Politics.
With it unlikely now that any of the top three Republicans will leave the race, the election season slows down. Next up are Saturday’s caucuses in Kansas and Louisiana, to be followed by next Tuesday’s primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Huckabee’s gains solidified the appearance that he and McCain were working in tandem to hold back Romney, who has been fighting a knock-down, drag-out political battle with McCain since winning the Michigan primary Jan. 15.
Romney desperately needed a big-state win both to bolster his delegate count and to grab the momentum from McCain, who has rolled through successive victories in South Carolina and Florida in recent weeks.
“It’s over. I think it’s ended up pretty much where we thought it would end up. Whether Romney wants to get out or not, he’s finished essentially,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said early today.
In West Virginia, Romney led on the first ballot of the state’s convention to pick its GOP nominee. According to the Associated Press, some supporters of McCain and long-shot candidate Ron Paul defected to Huckabee to keep Romney from getting the win in the state, which represented 18 delegates out of more than 1,000 at stake in Tuesday’s 19 Republican contests.
In results from exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the Associated Press and television networks in 16 states with primaries Tuesday, McCain, as expected, led among independents voting in GOP contests. What was not as widely expected was that McCain and Romney appeared tied among self-described Republicans overall.
Another surprise was that McCain not only led among those who cared most about the Iraq war and terrorism but among those who said the economy was their top concern. Romney’s economic message — he has touted himself as a successful businessman who knows how to make jobs — was considered by many as one of his strong points.
In recent days, Romney has seen conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter come to his defense, questioning McCain’s credentials to be a Republican nominee. But if the results Tuesday were any indication, those attacks had little effect — unless it was to move voters toward Huckabee.
Limbaugh’s Web site, for instance, called McCain’s campaign “disgraceful” and “insecure” for attacking Romney on a statement that he didn’t need former Kansas senator and GOP candidate Bob Dole’s support. Another headline on the Web site Tuesday evening said a “Vote for Huck is a Vote for McCain.”
“They are idealogues and they’re concerned about their ideology,” said Michael Traugott, a professor of communication studies and senior research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Center for Political Studies.
Another question raised by TV pundits Tuesday night was whether McCain’s strength in states that have gone Democratic in recent general elections — like New York, New Jersey and Illinois — really helps him should he become the GOP candidate.
Traugott said that should be weighed against McCain’s likely strength to take independent votes away from the eventual Democratic nominee.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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