• Ding Dong. Mitt Romney’s dead.
• Holy Huckabee. We were sure Huckabee was, ahem, cock-blocking Romney’s shot at the GOP nomination. It appears the dynamic was, in fact, reversed.
• McCain now looks inevitable. But imagine for a moment that Huckabee had stolen Oklahoma an Missouri away from Mac last night. Then we’d truly be talking up the Huckabee resurrection … and the fact that the only Red state John McCain actually won was his home state of Arizona.
• Clinton wins big in California. Delegates, shmelegates. She won the sexiest prize on the table tonight. Far from home. Convincingly. Thanks to overwhelming Hispanic support. Sí se puede.
• Obama did what he needed to do tonight — he won in the blackest and the whitest contests. Kansas and Georgia. North Dakota and Alabama. Alaska and Delaware. The comparisons to Jesse Jackson are over.
• He emerged with not only a draw in delegates, but also cobbled together geographically impressive wins in bellwether Missouri, and in Clinton’s backyard, Connecticut.
• While Obama has proven he’s not simply the black candidate, Clinton emerged tonight very much as the female candidate, with her margin of victory again and again coming from the votes of women.
• John Edwards oddly picked up at least 5 percent of the vote in Arizona and California. Early absentee votes? Or stubborn voters?

Remind me never to trust another Zogby poll again.

Tie Goes to Obama: based on generous delegate projections for Clinton in California, MSNBC is roughly projecting an 841/837 delegate split… with Obama on top. In other words, a Tsunami tie.

Alaska! The biggest [land-mass] victory of all goes to … Obama.

Missouri goes for Obama? This is his big state. Another real surprise. Goes a long way for him plausibly claiming a tie tonight.

Clinton takes California. This is huge for her. It will be interesting to see what the delegate count in California is, but it looks like she’s got a monster lead in the popular vote.

California for McCain. I think we have a nominee. So long, Romney. It was fun while the flip-flops lasted. [Chris Matthews is already talking about the Romney "autopsy" ouch.]
Missouri for McCain — if he hadn’t taken that it could have been disaster for him tonight.

Obama’s line of the night: “Change will not come if we wait for some other person. Or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

If you’re a Democrat you’ve got to love McCain’s incompetence as a speechmaker. He gives terrible teleprompter. God the contrast between he and Obama would be glorious. But even Hillary Clinton would sound like MLK in contrast.

Clinton takes Arizona.

California exit poll looks really tough for Obama. 65 percent of Hispanics voted for Hillary. 72 percent of Asians did. Tops 60 percent of Hispanic men. She’s winning 55-40 among Democrats.

Idaho for Obama.

Mike Huckabee is having a hell of a night. Georgia. Arkansas. Alabama. If he wins Missouri and Romney takes California, McCain could be in trouble again.

Connecticut for Obama. That’s a win in Clinton’s backyard. The first real surprise of the night.

Huckabee tries to box out Romney: “They’ve been saying this is a two-man race. Well it is. And we’re in it.”

(more…)

After a strong showing on the first ballot, Mitt Romney goes down to Mike Huckabee in West Virginia.

UPDATE: Willard’s camp is whinging:

“Governor Romney had enough respect for the Republican voters of West Virginia to make an appeal to them about the future of the party based on issues. This is why he led on today’s first ballot. Sadly, Senator McCain cut a Washington backroom deal… with the tax-and-spend candidate [Huckabee] he thought could best stop Governor Romney’s campaign of conservative change.”

John McCain is clearly in the driver’s seat after dramatic win in Florida last night.

• Romney outspent him 10:1 in the ad war, but McCain still won a five point victory in the Sunshine state.
• Giuliani is dropping out and endorsing, leaving McCain uncontested for the Maverick/Warmonger vote.
• Huckabee is still in this race and poses a double-threat to Romney. Huck erodes Romney’s support among churchgoers in Southern states if he stays in. But if he drops out, he’s likely to angle for a McCain veep nod; expect him to fall in line behind McCain when he departs.

Romney’s not yet toast.

• He can rightly claim he’s the one guy who consistently wins among Republicans. In closed primaries, that gives him an outside shot. (But the biggest closed primary is California, and Ahnold seems set to back McCain there.)
• If he wants to get ugly, the fact McCain’s margin of victory came from the Hispanic vote last night could allow Romney to stage a nativist swan song. The fact that Bay Buchanan is one of Romney’s chief advisers suggests the campaign may not shy away from that race-baiting fight.

But…

• The winner-take-all aspect of McCain-friendly states like New York, New Jersey, Arizona and Connecticut makes a delegate battle tough for Romney.
• More trouble for Romney: Far from being seen as the outsider/agent of change, now he’s viewed as the status quo Republican, per the exit polling. Voters who were happy with Bush and happy with the economy pulled the lever for Romney. The angry-with-Bush “change” vote gravitated toward McCain. This suggests Romney’s sunny, optimistic ads about reviving the economy may have seemed out-to-lunch for GOP voters getting jittery about a recession.

Fundamentally this race is going to come down to three factors.

1. How much money is Mitt willing to spend.
2. How strong is the anyone but Mac coalition?
3. And how well does McCain the insurgent transition into McCain the frontrunner?

The answers are going to have to be

1. A shitload
2. Rabid
3. Worse than even his doubters suspect

for Romney to remain competitive in this race.

Romney won 33/31 among whites.

But more than 50 percent of the Hispanic vote went to McCain. Latinos were only 10 percent of the vote (split 6 percent Cuban / 4 percent non-) but they were enough to push McCain over the edge.

We’re linking to this over on the Video Feed too, but I just couldn’t pass up a chance to weigh in on the whisper-assist to Romney in last night’s debate.

Tim Russert is asking Romney whether he’d do what Reagan did to solidify Social Security. Romney looks a little non-plussed until there’s an audible whisper from somewhere “…raised taxes,” after which Romney immediately starts in “I’m not going to raise taxes….”

Watch it:

So many questions. Whose voice was that? The only innocuous explanation I can figure out is that one of the other candidates had a live mike and whispered it to themselves. But I think MSNBC and Romney owe us all an explanation.

Recalls “the bulge” from the Bush/Kerry debates doesn’t it?

UPDATE: MSNBC keeps offering up iffy explanations, the latest of which is that it was a live mike in the crowd that picked up an audience member, whose prompt was heard by no one on stage.

Romney leads McCain by three points in the first Florida poll reflecting Fred Thompson’s exit.

According to Rasmussen.

The real drama in Florida is what will Fred Thompson do. He’s sitting at about 13 percent support. If he drops out and throws the full weight of his backing behind McCain, which I think is highly likely, he could leave his mark on the race as a kingmaker.

I’d look for that endorsement around Thursday.

BTW: Giuliani? In third.