John McCain, the anointed Republican frontrunner whom the brave souls at CPAC endorsed through gritted teeth, might lose all three contests tonight to Mike Huckabee.
[A]s of right now, of three Republican contests held today, it looks likely that Mike Huckabee will win all three.We already know about Kansas, which was a blowout for Huckabee. With 62% of precincts reporting Huckabee is up by 8 point over McCain in Louisiana. And Huckabee is ahead of McCain by 3 points in Washington state with 37% of the caucuses there reporting.
Huge swathes of the Republican party loathe the guy, but since governor cellophane dropped out of the race primary voters don’t have anybody else to turn to. Except Mike Huckabee.
Huckenfreude obviously won’t win, even if he does make the next few months a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
***Update***
It’s still a close call, but it looks like the rampaging McCain juggernaut just barely scraped together a win in Washington state.
myiq2xu
Oops!
Circle the firing squad and prepare to fire!
The Other Steve
With Romney out, it’s quite possible that Huckabee might pick up a lot of support. McCain hasn’t won anything with much over 40% thus far. He’s not pulling in 60-70% anywhere.
We all seem to think he’s crazy, but when you look at where the Republicans are today he’s pretty damn mainstream.
Furthermore it’s in the interest of the business conservatives for Huckabee to get the nomination and then lose disasterously.
KG
McCain is pulling ahead in Washington, 78% reporting and he’s up 26-24, Paul has 21% and 16% didn’t get the memo that Romney is out.
I don’t know what is happening to the GOP, but I’m starting to buy into the notion that we are heading for some sort of major realignment. I don’t know if the GOP will survive the realignment… and if the GOP doesn’t survive, I wonder what happens to the Democratic Party. I suspect it becomes dominate or it also breaks apart and we have completely different parties than today, even if they are still called “Republican” and “Democrat”
empty
From your lips to god’s ears. I think.
myiq2xu
I never thought that newfangled Republican party would last.
They don’t have the history and tradition that we do.
Party of Lincoln? We’re the party of Jefferson!
Digital Amish
So continues my string of backing the wrong horse. I just yesterday mailed my WA primary ballot for Alan Keyes. Damn!
PaulB
What’s interesting is that McCain has won a simple majority of votes in so few states: 55% in New Jersey, 52% in Connecticut, and 51% in New York. In every other state, he was under the 50% mark. Equally interesting is his dismal performance in caucus states, where 26% is his best showing so far. Bizarrely, that 26% might actually be enough to give him victory in Washington.
McCain appears to be a winner by default, not because of his popularity among Republican voters. And that speaks well for Democratic chances in November.
Rick Taylor
O.O
Oh my God, it’s the loaves and the fish!
Oh, this is horrifying and too funny all at the same time.
TenguPhule
It’s like watching a horrifying car wreck taking place in slow motion involving the people we hate most.
We’re going to need bigger popcorn buckets.
myiq2xu
From Thers at FDL:
Why are we so divided? Why are we so choked with venom, with… hatred? As a movement, we need to keep our eyes on the higher truth, on the deeper purpose behind this acrimonious bickering. We need to put all selfishness, all negativity, all rancor behind us. We — or, more specifically, you — need to stop with the yelling, stop with the name-calling, stop with the slander, and acknowledge and realize the truth, accept the facts, and move forward so together we can achieve victory in November.
You need to admit that your favorite candidate sucks.
I fully realize that this may be a very hard thing for you to do. I understand. After all, it is quite clear that the chief reason you support your favorite candidate is because of your own personal failings and inadequacies.
I am not unsympathetic. There are clearly no rational reasons to support your favorite candidate, so it is only logical to rummage in the danker, smellier corners of your soul for the origins of your bizarre and inexplicable preference of a presidential candidate who sucks. Please be assured however that I do not judge you harshly for the fact that you surely like to molest squirrels while high on crack cocaine. This is likely only the melancholy if inevitable consequence of your upbringing in a family of dysfunctional, alcoholic leprechauns. With therapy, you may heal. Perhaps.
ladonne
Huck is finally claiming the prize for all of the thumpers. Or at least all of the thumpers who haven’t decided that being a single issue voter hasn’t worked out so well for them.
Washington state is still out — I’d love for Huckabee to stay in — if only to hear Limbaugh call him ‘the huckster’ and then claim he said it affectionately.
Splitting Image
Huck may have just put the last nail in Hillary Clinton’s coffin. I was arguing the other day with someone who didn’t believe that any of the Republican strongholds would be in play in November and that Obama’s wins there would be meaningless.
I think today might have shot that theory to ribbons. McCain is clearly more vulnerable in a lot of Republican strongholds than people imagined, and a strong Democratic challenger (and Obama is clearly the stronger of the two in that part of the country), can either pick them off or force McCain to waste a lot of money defending them.
It boggles the mind that Kansas could go to the Democrats, but if the Democrats field their strongest candidate and the Republicans field their weakest, it could happen. I doubt anyone believed Massachusetts would go to the Republicans in 1984, but it did.
Mind you, McCain has a few months to shore up his flanks, so it probably won’t happen, but if he hasn’t improved his standing in flyover country by the summer, then he may start looking more and more like a Republican Walter Mondale.
ladonne
I’d say watch for Huckabee to make something in Texas. Remember that Dumond’s wife came to Texas (before she died) and worked for a local attorney whose wife is now a state rep (republican of course — she was also the one who asked then Pres Bill Clinton why he was keeping an innocent man in prison — a man who ultimately killed another — oh and the freepers have scrubbed all that from their website). Huckabees’s ties are deep in Texas.
Rex
Ron Paul pulled over 20% in Washington today. The hits keep on coming for the GOP establishment.
Todd Dugdale
Perhaps the GOP will go the way of the Whigs and split into two parties down the line a few years: one religious and one corporate. The Bush neocon vision is burning out and is only kept alive by war-fever jingoism. Once we are no longer at war, these crazies will be looking for a new home.
There is still plenty of time for Bush to do something supremely stupid (I mean stupider than usual), and McCain will be forced to stand by him when that happens. The more McCain is forced to associate himself with Bush, the fewer Independents will vote for him.
For all we have heard about the “divisions” in the Democratic Party, if you step back you can see that it’s really just differences in style and perceptions of electability, not policies. The Republicans, on the other hand, have suffered a bruising primary season where the candidates differed significantly on policy. They are fundamentally divided on where their Party should go on an almost existential level. Republicans running for House or Senate seats simply have no idea which faction to apppeal to any more.
dslak
And chances are more likely that Clinton would welcome them and their ideas to her bosom than that Obama would.
myiq2xu
You said “bosom”
Hee hee!
dslak
Only because saying ‘tits’ would get me branded as sexist.
superdestroyer
The real question is what will the U.S. be like as a one party state. There is no reason to believe that the Republicans will split because they are the minority party now. Why take less than 50% and then split it in two.
The future will be one dominant party with the Democratic Primaries being the real election. A better scenario is what will happen when the former Republicans start voting in the Democratic Primary.
dslak
The Democrats are more like an fair-weather amalgamation of many different parties. History since WWII has shown that they won’t hesitate to stick it to each other, either for faith or for glory.
Normally, you would be right, but Huckabee carried two states last night – damn near three. Chances are they’ll still coalesce into oppositional solidarity once the Democrats are in control.
zzyzx
The best thing about this is that Huckabee is continuing to attack McCain. Go Huck go!
Dennis - SGMM
For years the Republicans have tooled the religion-voters, making lots of noises about the Marriage Amendment, Right to Life Amendment, vouchers for church schools, etc., and then paying them off after the election with more talk and no action.
“Hoist by one’s own petard,” comes to mind.
D-Chance.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen”? REALLY? That flu must really be frying your brain, Mr Cole.
Kansas – home of Creationism… you thought McCain would defeat the Creationist-preaching pastor in a state dominated by fundie evangelicals? REALLY?
Louisiana – backwater central, where they can’t find an animal in a waterlogged roadside ditch anywhere that they deem inedible… you thought they wouldn’t vote for the most backwater of candidates? REALLY?
As much as the schedule lined up perfectly for Obama last night, it lined up just as perfectly for Huckabee on the Republican side. If they had delayed the Arkansas primary until last night, they would have completed the trifecta of “most likely” Huckabee states in the nation.
Now, go down some more medicine and heal before posting analysis again. Flu-addledness posting
D-Chance.
Ah, no wonder it seemed sub-Cole, it was Tim F.
Mr. Cole… think… solo career.
D. Mason
Wishful thinking from a hyper-partisan?
Hillary Rettig / The Lifelong Activist
Slightly off topic, I must pay homage to Gail Collins’s takedown of Mitt in a recent NYT editorial entitled The Revenge of Seamus. Last line:
“All I know is somewhere in doggie heaven, an Irish setter is laughing.”
Calouste
Huckabee is going to contest the outcome of the Washington caucus according to the Seattle Times
Party.
Jake
Ah, I see you are unfamiliar with Superannoyer’s schtick.
S/he is really truly concerned because minorities (for reasons no one can figure out) tend to vote for Democratic candidates.
As the number of minority voters increases (and they mysteriously refuse to vote R in large numbers) that’s going to create a single-party country.
I’ve never seen S suggest a solution to this problem. Clearly, it is out of the question for Republicans to stop demonizing minority groups. Not that demonizing minority groups has anything to do with minority voting patterns! But s/he has never said minorities shouldn’t vote, or their votes should count for less than non-minorities’ votes. S/he seems to be stuck on Stage Two of racist concern trolling.
superdestroyer
Jake,
Minority birthrates and immigration rates are what will eventaully destroy the Republican Party no matter what they do. If Hillary Clinton cannot attract black votes, do you really think there is anything the Repubicans can do to change the situaition.
At the Republican convention this summer, the Republicans could come out for reparations and increasing affirmative actions and it would not increase the percentage of the black vote that Republicans receive by any amount. However, it would lose a large amount of the white vote that the Republicans still receive.
So, if the Republican party is able to compete is fewer districts and states each election cycle, there will come a time whne they have no chance of ever being the majority party. When that happens (or some time sooner) the Republicans will cease to exist and the U.S. will be a one party state. Why would anyone put effort into a political party that has no chance of ever affecting policy or governmental actions? The green party and the libertarians have demonstrated that the number is very low.
One of the other outcomes is what are the elite whites in the Democratic Party going to do when blacks and Hispanics come to dominate the Democratic Party. A green/progressive party would end up as white as the current Republican Party.
Since blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews are all so overwhelmingly Democratic and unmovable, the U.S. cannot end up as anyting but a one party state.
Z
And less than 4 years ago Repubs were crowing about Repubs now and forever… It is a little tooo soon to declare that the country will become a one party nation. Democrats have a unfortunate propensity to screw up what they are given.
Johnny Pez
I tell you, it’s the Whigs all over again. They win a few elections, get a couple presidents in the White House, but in the end they just don’t have any staying power.
superdestroyer
Z,
The main proponents of the permanent Republican majority were liberal Democratic academics. They reached their conclusion because they refuse to review the strength of identify politics in the Democratic party.
The Republicans are faced with getting a higher percentage of the white vote with each election cycle to remain where they are now. That is not a realistic hope and thus, the Republicans will quickly become irrelevant. The incompetence and stupidity of the Bush Administration not only sped up the process but destroyed the next generations of Republican candidates.
To use an analogy, the Republican party has no hand and no draw. Thus, they will have to fold.