1. Zogby now gives Romney a clear lead in California. But the national poll shows him barely ahead of Huck and way behind McCain. A few narrow victories in the South and in California will hardly offset the landslide coming in most of the country. John will be able to run the convention and campaign as he pleases after tomorrow.

2. Obama really is closing fast and may well more or less tie Hillary tomorrow. If that happens, he’ll pick up lots more senatorial and other prominent endorsements. If I really were to bet the plantation on something on which I could still get good odds, it would be on an impending Clinton collapse. Let me say once more: Nobody should be happy about this.

1. The latest studies from Georgia (yes, more than one) put McCain, Romney, and Huck in a virtual three-way time, with John with an insignificant lead. The Republican elected officials in Georgia--with the most prominent exception of our mediocre, McCain-endorsing Senators--are rallying around Romney in a fairly impressive way. It’s hard to know what to advise to avoid the enraging outcome of McCain sneaking through with exactly 30% of the vote, with the other two just a point or two behind. Romney is surging some, but Huck is apprently not declining that much. I anticipate and hope for some movement from Huck to Romney in these last couple of days. At this point, it makes sense to vote Romney in Georgia, unless you’re one of those Huck guys who would choose McCain next (you stick with Huck).

2. In Tennessee and Alabama, Romney is not doing as well, as far as I can tell.

3. As a matter of honor--to avoid even the appearance of corrupt bargaining or simiilar impropriety--McCain should make it clear that he won’t pick either Huckabee or Thompson as his running mate.

4. McCain might think about selecting Romney, just to show that he’s not too "McVain" to really deliberate. His contempt for Romney seems to based in his "patriotism not profit" thing. Romney and his five strapping, species-perpetuating sons didn’t "serve." That view is based upon a too-spirited elevation of martial over marital virtue. From the point of view of the family guy, Romney is the most virtuous MAN in the race. And so the McCain-Romney ticket is the marrige of the warrior’s courage and the father’s responsibility and fidelity.

1. proving that I was wrong to say he’d only carry Mass. and Utah.

2. The Zogby poll now has Mitt ahead in California, and the others have him within striking distance. That may be one big state where the anti-McCain vote has become somewhat united. If he wins there, he can legitimately stay in the race. (From a Romney point of view, it’d be better if CA were winner-take-all.)

3. Almost all the Southern states are now looking something like Florida or South Carolina, with McCain poised to get 30-some% and the vote against him divided. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to consolidate that vote, in part because it’s not really anti-McCain enough.

4. With the strange exception of Rasmussen (which shows a tie betwen John and Mitt), the national polls now give McCain a huge lead.

The latest poll in Georgia has McCain with an 11 point lead over Huckabee and Romney, who are tied.

The NYT’s David Kirkpatrick surveys the range of reactions to John McCain as the nominee. WHile some, like James Dobson, say they’ll never support him, others, who claim to be more in touch with the grassroots, can find a way of reconciling themselves.

Are we witnessing the COMPLETELY UNDESERVED victory of the Giuliani-McCain-Schwarzenegger wing of the Republican party? No candidate was ever more thoroughly repudiated than Rudy. And John has never even gotten a plurality of Republican votes in any of the primaries so far. Noboy really think Arnold is a Republican (except in some strange California sense) anymore. I’m not suffering from deranged hostility against McCain. It’s just that facts are facts and my sense of justice is offended by them.

The least that needs to happen, in my view, is that McCain needs to be chastened by a worse-than-expected showing next Tuesday. It’s not true that Romney would win in the southern states (including MO and OK) if Huck were out of the race. And Huck doesn’t have any chance at all outside the South at this point, although he’s ahead in GA and close in AL, TN, OK, and MO.

So I’m inclined to be for Romney next week in the North, where I advise him to campaign hard on McCain’s indifference and incompetence on the economy. And to be for Huck in the South, where I advise him to hit McCain hard on the socially conservative, pro-life front, while leaving religion out of it. They should both starting talking about the fake conservatism of the G-Mc-S wing... It goes without saying that my advice almost certainly won’t be taken (again). (Romney sounded way too much like the petulant Bob Dole in last night’s debate--accusing McCain of distorting his record etc.)

Hugh Hewitt hasn’t given up altogether, but seems to think that Huckabee’s past and future role can only be to make things harder for his man Romney. Ramesh Ponnuru makes a version of this argument in drawing a parallel with 1996--Huckabee is Pat Buchanan made young and beautiful, taking out Romney, who is Phil Gramm made young and beautiful.

I guess I don’t buy the argument that Huckabee’s presence in the race hurt Romney, because I’m not convinced that the folks who voted or will still vote for Mike would have, in his absence, voted for Mitt. Part of the reason for this, I’ve already noted: there are evangelicals who have a hard time elevating a Mormon to the highest political office in the land. But there are also these three additional considerations. First, Romney seems a little less solid on pro-life issues than is McCain. The latter hasn’t flip-flopped on the subject, and doesn’t give the appearance of taking positions in order to position himself for various constituencies. Second, a lot of evangelicals are very serious about our conflict with jihadism, regarding it as both a matter of national security and a civilizational challenge. McCain the warrior-president fits this part of their "worldview" better than does Romney the manager-president. Third, note that Huckabee’s voters are younger than either Romney’s or McCain’s. As I’ve noted before, younger evangelicals tend to have a broader range of policy concerns than their elders. This doesn’t mean (as some commentators have suggested) that they’ll trade a congenial position on global AIDS relief, human trafficking, or the environment for a less congenial position on abortion, just that they’re not natural constituents of a more or less classic business Republican. Absent Huckabee, they don’t all naturally gravitate toward Romney.

Changing the subject, I liked this NRO symposium, especially for its suggestions about how McCain and his conservative critics could arrive at a modus vivendi. I have at least one quibble, however: McCain does need a running mate that conservatives find congenial, but not the aged Hamlet Fred Thompson. A big risk with McCain at the head of the ticket and a similarly "experienced" running mate is that Republicans will lose touch with younger voters who, if they get into the habit, will vote the "wrong" way for a long time.

When I was a kid, I remember sometimes going to a family restaurant with my grandparents where there was a cigarette vending machine in the lobby. Since they smoked, occasionally I’d be sent on an "errand." Of course, technically, I wasn’t supposed to do this. And they might have caught some trouble (from both the authorities and my parents) if I weren’t discreet and had been discovered while on one of these missions. But I was discreet and they didn’t get into any trouble. The last time I checked, I wasn’t carrying any moral scars and--as I’ve mentioned before--I don’t smoke or even, particularly, like smoking. At some point, however, the people decided that this easy access to tobacco might not be in the best interests of all children and parents trying to raise their children not to smoke, so the machines were pulled.

But there are always new twists on old themes. Now, in California, there’s something of an opposite movement. To be sure, no one is proposing adding cigarette machines to restaurant lobbies. Heaven forbid the demon tobacco find any toleration or sanction in health-obsessed California! No, here, we prefer Mary Jane, Hashish, Pot, or whatever you like to call it. Granted, you need to have a "prescription" and you have to use your fingerprint to make the machine function. But the argument for these machines is curious: its defenders argue convenience but also, oddly, anonymity. The machines are not in restaurant lobbies, but tucked away out of sight. So where’s the convenience? If convenience were the issue, then we’d have them in at least as many places as we have Starbucks, right? There’s still some sense of shame surrounding the purchase of pot? Imagine that!? There’s still some sense of shame (or at least embarrassment) surrounding the purchase of condoms and feminine hygiene products too, but that doesn’t prevent nearly every restaurant and bar from placing those vending machines in their restrooms. In many restrooms, you can even purchase aspirin and allergy medication from vending machines--so why not this "medication?" Why not Viagra vending machines? Or oxycontin? Penicillin anyone? (You can put that next to the Viagra, of course!) So I think these guys are making a mistake. The extremes the machine’s manufacturer took to prevent kids from being sent on an "errand," make it seem unlikely that there will be many accidental purchases by unauthorized individuals. So why not just put them everywhere? If marijuana use is just as innocuous as aspirin use, why not put them out in the open? And then, before you know it, society will accept it in the same way it now appears to accept illicit sex.

1. Listen (let me repeat), there’s no way McCain can be stopped. The (very un-democratic) winner-take-all process that Giuliani had put into place to help himself now pretty much guarantees McCain will simply have the delegates on Feb. 5. McCain was perfectly right to give an I’ve won the nomination speech last night.

2. Let me repeat what I said at the beginning of all this: Giuliani and Huckabee were both obviously too extreme to get the nomination.

3. On balance, McCain and Huckabee remained the authentic candidates from beginning to end. McCain on character/leadership and Huck on "values." They were the over-performing candidates, and their strange man-love connection is not merely a marriage of convenience.

4. Some Corner people are grousing that without Huck in the race Romney would have prevailed as the socially conservative candidate. Studies don’t back that up: Lots of Huck voters in Florida reported that their second choice was McCain. There’s surely some anti-Mormon bigotry there, but there are other reasons too. Actually Romney did take a lot of Huck voters. Romney and McCain surged as Huck and Rudy faded. And they faded almost exactly the same amount. One-on-one in FL: McCain would have beaten Romney pretty easily. One-on-one in SC: Probably McCain beats Huck, but maybe not.

5. If Huck were to drop out of the race, McCain would probably sweep the South. The best Romney could reasonably hope for would be some close contests and maybe a victory in winner-take-all MO. That would not be anywhere near enough to make any difference. It’s still conceivable that Huck could win Georgia, for example. But his concession speech in FL seemed too much like a concession speech in general. Unfortunately, it’s not very authentic for him now not to assert in a manly way his superiority over McCain on all the domestic issues.

6. Let me also repeat that Romney would be a good president. It’s just not so clear he’d be a good candidate. McCain is very chancy, in my view, on both fronts.

Here are the exit polls. Note that evangelicals (40% of the electorate) split their votes between Huckabee, Romney, and McCain. And while you’d think that, on some of the issues, Huckabee’s voters would have preferred Romney to McCain if their man weren’t in the race, many more told the pollsters that their second choice was McCain. Are these the evangelicals who just can’t bring themselves to vote for a Mormon?

Another interesting feature of the vote was that McCain seems to have won among voters who regarded the economy as the big issue. Wasn’t Romney supposed to have owned that constituency?

Finally, Romney won among the more conservative (37-27), more Republican (33-31) voters, but not by enough, among enough to overcome McCain’s very substantial leads in other categories. And if I’m right about where Huckabee’s supporters would go if the man from Hope weren’t on the ballot, McCain would be gaining ground in the aforementioned categories.

Can anyone think of a scenario (not including a McCain implosion) in which Romney wins the nomination, especially if, as is likely, Giuliani pulls out and endorses McCain? Huckabee’s presence on the ballot across the South hurts McCain more than Romney. Giuliani’s absence on the coasts surely helps McCain. But I think that all that Huckabee can do, even if he should perform well in his region, is postpone the date when McCain reaches the magic number.

1. ...in FL, and it’s not all that close. As in SC, his support by the state party establishment--in this case (studies show) Crist and Martinez--made the difference. John wasn’t the maverick after all, and Mitt remained the outsider with money.

2. Giuliani, who did poorly, will and has no choice but to endorse McCain tomorrow. He wants to at least be on the winning side in NY, NJ, etc.

3. Even without any FL mo’ or Rudy’s help, McCain is leading in most of the Feb. 5 states, and in all the urban and urbane states with the winner-take-all policies.

4. Mitt might as well fight on (it’s only a week), but he’ll probably take common-sense spending limitations more seriously now. He has to hope John really screws up.