SC/Nevada Saturday Winners and Losers

Ok, now we're settled in NY and ready to analyze what happened today.

Let's start with the Republicans, since they had two contests.

McCain is a winner because he "won" South Carolina and the Punditocracy had declared that South Carolina was a major contest. But put an asterisk by McCain's win for a couple of reasons. First, his win was quite narrow--just three points over Huckabee. If the Straight Talker's buddy Fred Thompson hadn't been actually trying for a change in SC, Huckabee probably would have won. And that's the thing about this many-headed hydra of a GOP campaign--a lot depends on who's trying and who isn't in any given contest. Second, as we predicted a couple days ago, McCain's got far fewer votes in "victory" in SC today than he did in defeat in 2000, when he carried 42% of the vote.

Still, with everybody pretty much out of money at this point, having your name under the word "winner" in the Mainstream Media at this point is surely worth celebrating, and it gives McCain a little momentum going into Florida.

Except for one little problem: the next contests aren't in Florida. They're in Lousiana and Hawaii. How are the candidates doing in those states? WHO KNOWS! According to the MSM, they don't exist. But someone will nonetheless capture their delegates, which might turn out to be valuable come this September.

The next winner for today is Mitt Romney, who won the GOP Nevada caucus on the cheap. For all the dumping on Romney by the punditocracy, he leads in delegates after the completion of six contests, three of which he won: Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada. McCain is third in delegates, despite the MSM crowning him "front-runner." And it's just a guess, but we bet Romney has positioned himself to win a good chunk of delegates in Hawaii and Louisiana next Tuesday, too.

On top of that, Romney has positioned himself well to pick up the rapidly coalescing anti-McCain vote, especially if Giuliani and Thompson both collapse entirely, which could easily happen after Florida. All those right-wingers who hate McCain--Coulter, Limbaugh, etc., are starting to line up behind Romney.

Romney also has something else the others don't: moola. It's his own money, of course, but it could be a decisive advantage now that we're in the thick of it. In short, don't count Romney out by a long shot.

Huckabee is also sort of a winner today. He came in a strong second in SC, despite Thompson cutting into his base. How much longer Huckabee can compete, however, is a question. If we were the Huckster, we'd concentrate on winning delegates on Super Tuesday in Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama and maybe Missouri.

Huck is also a loser, however, as he limps out of SC in the eyes of the MSM, with little momentum going into Florida.

Speaking of Florida, why do we let those people have any say in our national elections? Talk about F'd up--Florida is going to have a winner-take-all primary where no candidate is likely to take more than 30% of the vote. Heck, the winner might just get around 25%. What kind of way is that to run a nominating contest? Thank goodness the RNC stripped the state of half its delegates.

Those stripped delegates--not just from Florida, but several other early primary states as well (Michigan, SC)--are going to come back to haunt the GOP if there is a deadlock. As part of the inevitable maneuvering, people are going to haggle over whether those delegates should be restored, and someone, of course, will stand to benefit more than someone else. But that's a story for a later day.

One other winner for the day on the GOP side: Ron Paul. He won four delegates in Nevada. Now he's got a seat at the table come September.

Losers: Fred Thompson. Way too late, he staked it all on SC, but he didn't come close--a distant third. Should he throw in the towel? We say know, but he ought to cut back. The Fredster should stick it out through Super Duper Tuesday and take Tennessee as a favorite son. After that, he may just want to sit on those delegates, not piss anyone off, and see if he can be everyone's second choice in event of a deadlocked convention. All along we've said Thompson had no strategy, but maybe we were wrong--clever like a fox, this was his strategy all along. Darn, why didn't we see it!

Rudy Giuliani is another loser. Another big day out of the limelight. And, unfortunately for him, McCain comes into Florida with a bit of momentum, probably enough to beat the Rudester, who is competing for the same sub-base of voters as McCain. Much as we'd love to see Giuliani win Florida just to scramble the pie some more, he surely deserves to lose and be done with for political stupidity.

Now quickly to the Democrats. We already said in our brief post this afternoon that Edwards is a big loser. Omigod--4% in Nevada. Turn it in, John.

Hillary is a winner--like McCain, she got the headlines because all the media can digest is the percentage of the vote in the horserace. She needed the victory to dampen the likely loss in South Carolina next weekend, and to give her some momentum into Florida.

But Barack is not much of a loser--he actually got one more delegate than Hillary, and he's keeping it close. However, the theory that Edwards being out of it will help Obama seems to be false--Edwards was invisible in Nevada, yet Hillary won (votewise, at least).

The Democratic Party is also a loser, as the campaign between Hillary and Obama is getting uglier and uglier and starting to create a nasty divide in a party that only a few weeks ago was exuberant over its chances of capturing the White House after eight years of torture. The Democratic race is likely to go on like this for some time, although with Edwards out of the way the likelihood of a deadlock is quite low at this point.

What about the pollsters? ARG is the big loser, having predicted Huckabee by 7 points and Romney in single digits. It's a toss-up among the rest, none of whom got Thompson in third. Slight edge to Survey USA, which called a four-point McCain win with one point between Romney and Thompson.

That's enough for tonight--if you got through all that, you're a true addict.