| Mitt Romney last night won the Republican Michigan primary. The numbers: Romney 39%, McCain 30%, Huckabee 16%, Paul 6%, Thompson 4%, Giuliani 3%, Uncommitted 2%, and Duncan Hunter <1%.
What does the Romney win mean? Slate's John Dickerson has an excellent analysis up: "Mitt's Not Over": "So we're back to square one in the Republican Party. Mitt Romney beat John McCain handily in Michigan, which means there have now been three major GOP contests and three different comeback winners. At this rate, Thompson will win South Carolina and Giuliani Florida. The GOP primary is starting to look like a Pee Wee soccer tournament: Everyone gets a trophy!"
Kevin Drum thinks that Mitt Romney will win the GOP nomination, largely because both McCain and Huckabee won't do so well as Mr. Establishment in the closed primaries, thanks to the antipathy for both from "real" conservatives.
Kos has a nice roundup of all the editorials characterizing Romney's Michigan win.
Crooks & Liars a clip on the Battle of the Speeches between McCain and Romney.
And did you notice Rudy Giuliani's numbers? He barely eked out a win over "uncommitted." Toast, right? Not in the fantasyland of the traditional media. (And that's been the story of these primaries, hasn't it? How terrible the pundits are, even harmful to the process.)
On the Democratic side, the Michigan primary doesn't count, because the state moved up its primary date too early and was stripped of its delegates. Only Clinton, Kucinich, Gravel, and "uncommitted" were on the ballot. Nothing to see, right? Not according to Tomas Edsall who reads "uncommitted" votes like tea leaves. Noting that Clinton lost to "uncommitted" among young and black voters and independents, Edsall posits:
"Looking toward the future, the Michigan exit poll demonstrates the viability of the Clinton campaign strategy of winning solid majorities in states that, unlike Michigan and South Carolina, do not allow participation of either Republicans or independents in their 'closed' primaries, like the February 5 contests in New York, Connecticut, Colorado and Arizona. Many very large February 5 states, however, including California, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, have open primaries that will give Obama a chance to pull in independent voters." |
