From TPM Reader JB …
Aren’t you buying the spin a bit by hyping this Florida contest up as decisive? Seems to me it’s going to be very close, and therefore indicative of a protracted battle. No? I just don’t see why a narrow victory/loss would mean that much. It will turn this thing into a two man race — I’ll grant you that.
JB might have a point. If the polls are even close to accurate 1st place and 2nd are going to be very close. What’s more, John McCain seems to have trouble getting much over 30% of the vote. So one could speculate that with Huck and Rudy shuffling off this electoral coil, that could free up more voters to put Romney into contention or even ahead nationwide.
Just speaking selfishly and cynically, I hope Florida’s not decisive. Because I don’t want to see this race wrapped up any time soon. And I especially don’t want to see McCain wrap it up this soon.
But a largely unremarked factor here is how the Republicans have chosen to structure this race. Most of the Republican races — including Florida and I think all the Super Tuesday states — are winner take all. Romney could be in contention everywhere. But if McCain can get a plurality of the vote McCain gets all the delegates. And of course vice versa.
Add to this that at least for the moment, McCain seems to be ahead in most of the Super Tuesday states. Not everywhere. But seemingly in the big ones. I think if McCain wins tonight there will be a big media boomlet for him. He’ll get a week of crazy press. And I think Romney will have a hard time overcoming McCain’s leads in a ton of states if he couldn’t manage it in this one state of Florida. And remember the all important winner-take-all factor. Close in a lot of states isn’t good enough for Mitt.
