Election Forecast

The Prince of Darkness offers his political forecast following Super Tuesday.

1. Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) late-night Super Tuesday victories in Missouri and then California give him half the convention delegates needed and all but clinch the nomination for him. Once again, Romney's tactics such as pouring $10 million into California worked in theory but not in practice.

2. The anti-McCain barrage from conservative talk show hosts led by Rush Limbaugh did not work. The old GOP tendency to get behind the presumptive leader trumped irritation with McCain. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour went on TV last night to say it was time for McCain's opponents to get out and make him the nominee.

3. There is now no clear path for Gov. Mitt Romney to the nomination. The former Massachusetts liberal never was able to sell himself as a conservative, finishing third behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and McCain in Southern states.

4. McCain is still a heartily disliked figure in the Senate, but usually soft-spoken Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), uncharacteristically, was the only anti-McCainiac to speak out. The reason may be that Cochran is the Senate's king of pork while McCain is a leading anti-porker.

5. A test for McCain comes Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an event he stiffed last year. He has to repeat what he has been saying lately: First, he will veto any tax increase passed by the Democratic Congress. Second, he will name Supreme Court justices in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. More than that, he has to say he is one of them.

6. McCain's asset is that there is no genuine conservative left against him. Huckabee is an evangelical, not a conservative (which is one reason he is unlikely to be picked as McCain's running mate). In next week's "Potomac primary" (Virginia, Maryland, and D.C.), it looks like McCain will be the winner, with Huckabee a strong second in Virginia.

7. Thanks to proportional representation, the Democratic fight will stretch out into April. It would have been a very big night for Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) had Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) not squeezed out a win in Missouri. The next really big tests come March 4 in Texas and Ohio.

8. The overriding story is that twice as many Democrats as Republicans voted on Super Tuesday, and the gap in enthusiasm was even larger. McCain as nominee faces a massive task ahead.

Burned Bridges

Today’s Washington Post provides an interesting perspective on how John McCain is viewed by some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate. While his “maverick streak” has earned quite a few enemies amongst the Republican base, it’s apparent that his style and legendary temper have certain Republican Senators a bit uneasy about a McCain presidency.

In a chamber once known for cordiality if not outright gentility, McCain has battled his fellow senators for more than two decades in a fashion that has been forceful and sometimes personal. Now, with the conservative maverick on the brink of securing his party's presidential nomination, McCain's Republican colleagues are grappling with the idea of him at the top of their ticket.

"There would be a lot of people who would have to recalibrate their attitudes toward John," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a supporter of Mitt Romney's who has clashed with McCain.

Many Senate Republicans, even those who have jousted with McCain in the past, say their reassessment is underway. Sensing the increasing likelihood that he will be the nominee, GOP senators who have publicly fought with him are emphasizing his war-hero background and playing down past confrontations… But others have outright rejected the idea of a McCain nomination and presidency, warning that his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office.

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

A former colleague says McCain's abrasive nature would, at minimum, make his relations with Republicans on Capitol Hill uneasy if he were to become president. McCain could find himself the victim of Republicans who will not go the extra mile for him on legislative issues because of past grievances.

"John was very rough in the sandbox," said former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who is outspoken in his opposition to McCain's candidacy. "Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. . . . He hasn't built up a lot of goodwill."