The Square Deal

In both the Democratic and Republican Presidential nomination battles, the establishment has been challenged.  That is great news for America.

For months before the primary / caucus season began, pundits seemed ready to coronate Hillary Clinton on the left and either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani on the right.  The voters, however, had something else in mind.

In Iowa, the establishment suffered a pair of body blows as outsiders Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) won substantial victories in the season’s first contest.  Then in New Hampshire, another candidate despised by the establishment–Senator John McCain (R-AZ)–scored another big victory for the little guys.

As the race has carried on into the south, voters have continued to signal their displeasure with the status quo by throwing their lots in with Obama and McCain.  Does this mean that they have their party nomination’s secured?  Far from it.  However, a message is being sent:  conventional wisdom doesn’t decide elections.  Votes do.

The American people are making their voice heard loud and clear, and the nation will be better for it. 

Tonight’s win in Florida for Senator John McCain makes him the clear front runner.  Not just in momentum, but also in delegates.

 The math now becomes much more difficult for Romney.  With Giuliani’s loss, many of the states where he was strongest–New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California, all of which are delegate rich–may well become McCain strongholds.  Moreover, Romney has yet to show that he can win in any state where he doesn’t enjoy a home field advantage.  His wins in the mountain states of Wyoming and Nevada more than likely reflect strength garnered from his Mormon roots (for example, while Nevada’s population is 7% Mormon, they were 20% of the electorate there a week-and-a-half ago) and his Michigan victory was expected as it is his native state.  Yet in every other primary this season (where he has outspent his opponents on the order of 9 and 10 to 1) he has fallen woefully short.

Romney strikes me as a very good man.  He’s certainly built a career and a family to be proud of.  But he’s not winning the contests where he has his opponents out-spent and out-gunned.  In the end you have to win and not just in your backyard.  Especially if you’re pouring the kind of resources Romney has into the states where he has been the also-ran.

The Republican race has rapidly narrowed into a Romney-McCain race.  As of this moment, however, it’s McCain who holds the hot hand.