CNN is struggling to find a narrative to apply to tonight's South Carolina results, and their default story line is pretty much what you'd expect: McCain's win makes up for his loss to Dubya here in 2000. Well, if you say so, Wolf.
The other thing they're saying? That McCain won because he got the South Carolina Republican establishment on his side.
Um... huh?
Let's stop this train for a second and look at the numbers. McCain gets
top billing because he managed to scrape together 33 percent of the
vote, and in a race this crowded you take a plurality and say "thank
you." But the other way of looking at the results is this: 49 percent
46 percent of the state's primary voters cast ballots for either Huckabee or
Thompson, who is very likely to quit the race after failing to pull a surprise upset in South Carolina.
The politicos like to point out that South Carolina has correctly predicted every GOP nominee since 1980, which gives McCain a big bump. But an alternative perspective on tonight's voting says that Palmetto State voters picked generic conservative Huckabee-Thompson, with McCain and Romney finishing second and third, respectively.
So:
- It's really a stretch to say that the GOP establishment pushed McCain to victory. When our GOP establishment gets behind a candidate, he doesn't limp across the finish line with 33 percent;
- If the result of the voting is that Thompson drops out in the next week, then you'll have a consolidation of the conservative vote;
- What do you say about the Romney vote? I really don't know how to categorize his South Carolina support, and I really don't know where his voters would have gone had he not been on the ballot. Instead, I'll just say this: I'd be surprised if the Romney voters broke strongly for either McCain or Huckabee, but I'm not speaking from some deep insight.
Bottom line? Another primary, another caucus, and once again, no clear trend. McCain gets the nominal frontrunner title, but it's tenuous. And if the net result is that Thompson drops out, then Huckabee might actually wind up getting a stealth boost. Which means if you're Romney, you celebrate Nevada (a state that almost makes South Carolina look normal by comparison), hang on and hope that you emerge from this mess as the compromise solution in a brokered convention.
This isn't exactly a news flash, but once again we're looking at a fundamentally divided GOP. And the Republicans who don't like McCain REALLY don't like McCain.
My guess? Despite the fact that this is the most frontloaded primary in American history, I'm now starting to wonder if the GOP race will continue beyond Super Duper Tuesday on Feb. 5. Which is kind of amazing, and not something I expected to be thinking on Jan. 19. It's at least possible, and McCain, Huckabee and Romney all have legitimate shots at winning the nomination. Will Rudy join them via a big win in Florida?
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