Fight for the White House

Well, for political junkies this election year is just about as good as it gets. The Republicans have virtually nominated a candidate who was about 100 bucks from being history in the middle of the nominating process. He was finished. The well financed, and well managed campaigns failed miserably.

Mitt Romney spent more money and put more energy into his campaign than perhaps all of the other candidates combined, but something was missing always, or perhaps it was the big something that nobody wanted to mention that grounded his effort. Mitt's Mormonism was just too much for many people, whether they would admit it or not, and most would not admit it. Americans had to endure getting yelled at by the pundits and talking heads and professional pols for a few weeks about how outrageous it would be if we were to exclude a person from the Presidency due to their religion, but we endured. While there was truth, in the purest sense and understanding of American politics, in the argument that religion should not matter, we all know that religion does in fact matter. It doesn't officially matter, but it matters.

The Guliani strategy, such an unbelievable failure, remarkable in it's speed and effect, might be worth a book or two for some future study in American presidential aspirants. Guliani, I believe, would have won the nomination, or at the very least competed, but instead decided his weakness in the early states would be too much to overcome. That may have been true, but to give up weeks of free press coverage had the same effect. In other words, he should have viewed it as "worth a shot," to keep his hat in the ring until the more friendly primary states had their votes, but instead gambled and failed badly.

I personally never viewed Huckabee as a serious possibility to get the nomination much less win in November. He was just far too much a preacher-presidential nominee, a hopeless combination following an evangelical presidency. A 2008 nominee was not going to be able to preach a sermon on Sunday, in the midst of a campaign, especially in 2008, but not even in the past or the foreseeable future.

McCain's nomination, unofficial at this point, was perhaps a nomination of attrition, due far more to the characteristics and strategic failures of Romney and Guliani than to anything magical that McCain himself possessed. But the nominee the Republicans didn't think they wanted, may turn out to be the one that is best suited to face the Democrats in this almost impossible year for Republicans. The moderate wing of the Republican Party has won out, and the timing might be perfect.