The American Debate: Luck, confidence are with McCain

From time to time, we run excerpts from the blog "Dick Polman's American Debate."

John McCain, the phoenix of American politics, is now marching with confidence toward the GOP nomination. Barring an unforeseen reversal . . . he seems well-positioned to cement his top-dog status when 22 more states weigh in, from coast to coast, Tuesday.

The stars appear to be aligning in accordance with his most fervent wishes:

1.

By winning the Florida primary, he demonstrated broad support among mainstream GOP voters - only registered Republicans were allowed to vote - and that was critical, because his previous . . . victories were powered by independents and crossover Democrats. . . .

2.

In victory, he can now reasonably argue that he's more than a one-trick pony. National security is his pet issue, yet the voters favored him by 5 percentage points over Mitt Romney, despite the fact that they cited the economy . . . as the overriding issue.

3.

Mike Huckabee, the evangelical candidate, helped McCain . . . by pulling tens of thousands of evangelical Floridians away from Romney. Absent Huckabee's presence in the race, many evangelicals (40 percent of the primary electorate) probably would have gravitated toward their backup choice, Romney. And Huckabee plans to stay in the race . . . thereby threatening again to dampen Romney's vote tallies.

. . . But McCain is not home free; as the fine print of the Florida exit poll makes clear, he still hasn't won over the diehard voters on the right. Romney beat him by 10 points among those voters who described themselves as conservative (62 percent of the primary electorate); conversely, McCain was heavily favored by the 28 percent of Republican voters who said they were moderate and by the 11 percent who said they were liberal. He was also the strong favorite of those who said they rarely or never attended church, but he was spurned by the devout.

Meanwhile, he was the first choice of those voters who said they were dissatisfied with President Bush. . . . He was the second choice of those who want to ban abortions, and the second choice of those who want to deport all illegal immigrants. (Regarding the latter item: Hispanics were 12 percent of the GOP turnout, and they voted overwhelmingly for McCain. This was the guy who supposedly had no chance . . . because of his support for giving illegals a path to citizenship. . . .)