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I don’t know if it was old people or what put McCain over the top down in the sunshine state, but this is ludicrous.  I can handle Romney losing, I would simply have prefered that he lose to a republican.

Romney just can’t get ahead with the MSM.

If McCain wins in Florida, his status as the national front-runner will be cemented.

If Romney comes out on top, the battle for the GOP presidential nomination will be up in the air.

Democrats’ Favorite Republican.

A fun video quickly identifying why it is bizarre for McCain to be considered a front runner for the Republican nomination.

Matt Lewis over at Townhall.com (a huge fan of McCain before his campaign shakeup up until the present) says,

Romney was ahead in the last Florida poll I saw, and since nothing that happened tonight is likely to radically upset the apple cart, he wins tonight merely by maintaining the status quo.

Lewis is intensely interested in seeing McCain win Florida, for him to maintain that the race is simply a “two man” affair at this point I think shows just how strongly Romney is picking up speed. Opponents will always give you a watered down version of reality that favors their candidate. Polls already show Romney significantly trending upward and he has been declared a winner in most circles after the one and only debate prior to Florida. Lewis himself even admits as much,

If one had to assign a winner tonight, Mitt Romney would probably get the nod.

Romney is leading the intrade prices at 60.0 to McCain’s 35.0….a sharp reversal from even just a few days ago.

So yes, it is a 2 man race, but I heavily suspect a Romney victory on Tuesday.

The idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can’t imagine.

Mitt Romney at Thursday night’s Florida debate.

An article here at all-encompassingly added to my already forming opinion.

Today I got an email from Glenn Beck’s email list that includes a paragraph that really nails the nail on the head.

What Glenn finds interesting is that whichever state Mitt Romney wins (3 so far), that’s always the one that the media says isn’t important. Romney would be a change and people are voting that way as he is leading the GOP in delegates. Apparently the media isn’t noticing, because the only thing they report is that he should drop out if he loses Florida.

It is terribly important to recognize the future projections, but those are so heavily shaped by recent performance and the perceived media reaction to them. Recent performance should be enough to keep Romney at the front of the pack. Media reaction is another story. McCain and Huckabee seemed wildly acclaimed with their wins. Romney’s are always “catch up” victories that simply keep him in the game. McCain is at the point where “1 more win seals the deal.” If the roles were switched I simply cannot believe that the media would give as much attention to New Hampshire and South Carolina wins by Romney when compared to McCain victories in Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada plus 2 second place finishes in Iowa & New Hampshire…all resulting in the most delegates and most votes total.

But again, it seems to all come down to fund-raising on par with a lemonade stand. Financial success in life coupled and indeed dominated by nearly unparalleled fund-raising by a Republican Washington outsider just doesn’t count.

UPDATE: Great video over at all-encompassingly.com of Joe Scarborough explaining his take on things

Chuck Norris touches on a touchy subject.

If my candidate of choice was 72 years old when inaugurated, I wouldn’t care because I believe in him.  However, the reality is that not everyone considers age as indiscriminately as I want to believe I do.  While McCain might be able to govern right now, he is only going to get older, has already had health problems in the past with skin cancer, and won’t be viewed as anything but old by the American electorate leading up to November.

So with 2 states down and a few more to go before February 5th, here is where we are at with the Republicans.  Iowa voted for Huckabee, and New Hampshire for McCain.  While I wouldn’t have much to complain about if Romney had won, it is interesting to note, as Hugh Hewitt does, that republican voters haven’t really decided any of the contests yet.  It is also interesting to note that Romney has the most delegates of all the candidates at this point, in a way proof of Huckabee’s and McCain’s inability to appeal in more than one of the 2 early states.

Iowa was decided by single issue evangelicals and New Hampshire by independents.  When there is a generic republican base of voters, we may see some other things given the liberal views and records of Huckabee and McCain.

Remember the debates between Gore and Bush back in 2000?  Gore could hardly contain himself in the first debate and would breathe heavily into the microphone and mumble while Bush was talking.  The second debate found a Gore so quiet and polite that it was scary.  Finally in the 3rd debate he was more casual and himself.  (It was like Goldilocks and the 3 bears…)

The New Hampshire debate Saturday found McCain rude and obnoxious with his jabs at Romney.  I heard several pundits talk about this that while McCain and others focused on the things they wanted to by attacking Romney, the image cast by McCain was his worst (and apparently common) side.

The debate yesterday was almost funny in how sedate McCain was.  He had obviously been told by advisers that acting the way he did in the first debate doesn’t help him and to just act presidential and dignified and hope the polls hold.  At times he seemed so timid that I turned to my brother and said, “McCain is acting like a dog that just got back from the vet after being neutered.”

Just like Gore in 2000, I find McCain of 2008 annoyingly unpredictable in something as straightforward as a debate.

Watching this debate further convinced me how lame these 30-60 second response debates are.

Someone says something, and then someone says its a lie.  The moderators never give enough time to really let the 2 people debate it.  It usually ends with someone getting the last say or whoever can come up with the best one-liner or zinger.

Sometimes they do get to the bottom of it though.  Fred Thompson’s question to Rudy was classic, “But do they get to stay in the country?”  Rudy kept defending his immigration plan, saying it wasn’t amnesty.  Thompson asked the same question 3 times in a row, laying bare a plan that allows people to stay, whatever the “penalty.”

Issues can be complicated and rarely can you get to the bottom of something with such short responses and no lasting debate allowed when there are still 6 people on the stage.  I’m not a fan of Ron Paul but with his poll numbers and fund raising, to exclude him seems so wrong.  However, 6 people still is just difficult.  Perhaps it is hopeless.