South Cackalacky

No this is not a misspelling. My friend and Southerner Ed Kilgore taught me that is what you call the Palmetto State.


Anyway, McCain needs to thank Fred Thompson, who sucked up 20% of the vote in key conservative counties--mostly at the expense of Mike Huckabee. Thompson have his farewell speech at about 8 PM EST and blamed it on the bed time of his grandchildren, when it really was his own bedtime he was worried about.

Huckabee is now up giving his speech, and claiming he ran with honor. Now I try not to take sides these days, but I need to call BS. He has a 527 making millions robo-calls attacking all of the other candidates. He is trying tell his people not to blame Thompson for their 3 point loss...but wait next week when Fred endorses McCain in Florida at some old folks home. Huckabee is saying very nice things about McCain now because he probably realizes that his best shot now is to be McCain's running mate. While that might help McCain with some social conservatives, it really will drive the fiscal conservatives and immigration activists nuts.

So now I wish to correct my earlier post about this primary and the GOP primary. The media will largely ignore Romney's win in Nevada and build up his win in New Hampshire too. Because he let them interview him all the time and had an open bar in the bus. That's how easy it is to win the press over. Now McCain is the leading candidate, and he will probably win Florida. At least my dog is excited about him.


(Photo credit: Mrs. Oldenburg)

And another point I want to make. I don't care what the delegate count says for this race or the Democratic one. About 5% of all delegates have been declared and right now Romney probably still is in the lead and Obama is virtually tied overall against HRC (minus the super delegates) but wins are what matters in this compressed schedule. I seriously doubt that the overall delegate count number will make any difference in the end. Someone will start racking up wins, and voters in future states will follow. That's the way it has happened every other time before. Even if somehow it come down to a brokered convention on either (or both) sides, that's where insurgents lose. Obama won't win a brokered convention because Bill Clinton will twist enough arms of super delegates to secure the nomination for his wife.

In order to win the nomination, Obama has to knock Clinton out, which is even harder now that he lost New Hampshire and Nevada narrowly. I don't know how he is going to do it, but that race won't end for a while.

Again, Ron Paul beat up on Giuliani. So Paul has beat Rudy in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina (I don't remember Wyoming) Mr. 9/11 is TOAST he is already behind McCain AND Huckabee in Florida...while he has been all by himself for weeks.

So the Republicans are down to three with McCain probably going to win it all (and Romney and Huckabee with outside chances). And the Democrats are down to two, with Hillary looking like she has the inside track.