McCain has the advantage next week

Robert Novak:

Florida's primary was the one former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney badly needed going into next week's 21-state Mega Tuesday. Instead, his loss by a slim margin to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) sends McCain into the Feb.5 showdown with a leg up on the Republican presidential nomination.

McCain has a natural advantage in next Tuesday's virtual national primary, especially in high-population California, New York and New Jersey. The winner-take-all method (by district or statewide) used by Republicans, in contrast to the Democrats' proportional representation, makes McCain a commanding favorite for the nomination.

To block McCain on Mega Tuesday, Romney needed to win in Florida. His well-financed campaign outspent everybody there. He was closely followed in the dollar derby by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who finished a poor third in Florida.

That effectively ends Giuliani's hopes for the nomination by the former front-runner in national Republican polls and dramatized his dramatic decline over the last two months. On Dec. 4, Giuliani led McCain in Florida by more than 20 percentage points. Giuliani is expected to endorse McCain.

Exit polls show that McCain lost the conservative vote to Romney by a big margin. But he was supported by war veterans and the serving military, important in Florida Republican primaries.

South Florida's large Republican Hispanic vote delivered for McCain, signifying another case where Romney's hard line on immigration backfired. The state's three Cuban-American congressional members appeared with McCain in Miami's "Little Havana."

The Cuban-American vote was pinned down with the endorsement by Sen. Mel Martinez, the national Republican party's former chairman. More lethal than a mere endorsement was the word spread by Martinez that he considers Romney a demagogue because of his tough stand against the immigration bill co-sponsored by McCain and Martinez.

...

It looks like the more liberal Republicans are ascendant this year. That is unfortunate, but should not be fatal. They are still not going to get their immigration agenda approved in Congress and they know it. The fact is that their immigration agenda is not that different from President Bush.

The most important issue in the November election to me is winning the war. If I have to vote for McCain to do that, I will hold my nose and vote for him, but I will probably not give him any money. When it comes to his election he has done a good job of taking my money out of politics. While I am a conservative and I do not like McCain's position on many issues my number one priority is winning the war. McCain needs to know that he is not getting a mandate for his liberal agenda in other areas. His sole mandate is to win the war and cut domestic spending.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more