McCain win leaves the GOP without a front-runner

What happened

Arizona Sen. John McCain scored a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary this week, reviving a campaign that had been largely left for dead and shaking up the race for the Republican presidential nomination. McCain won 38 percent of the vote, to 32 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the surprise winner of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, finished a distant third, with 11 percent of the vote, two points ahead of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “I’m past the age when I can claim the noun ‘kid,’” the 71-year-old McCain said in his victory speech, “but tonight, we sure showed them what a comeback looks like.”

After McCain’s campaign all but collapsed over the summer, he refocused his few remaining resources on New Hampshire, holding town-meeting–style events throughout the state. His win was a sharp setback for Romney, who heavily outspent his rivals in a state bordering his own, and who had finished a distant second in Iowa. McCain’s victory also stripped Huckabee of his short-lived front-runner status. The former Baptist minister now moves on to the party’s next contests with little in the way of a campaign organization or funding.

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What the editorials said

McCain seems to offer experience coupled with authenticity, and that’s a potent combination, said The Boston Globe. In an obvious bid to appeal to the party’s conservative base, Romney and Giuliani both ran away from some of their previously moderate stances. But McCain “campaigned without significantly modifying past positions,” while stressing his ability to lead in dangerous times. Voters in New Hampshire rewarded him, because they respect a candidate who sticks to his guns, even if they don’t always agree with him.

McCain is still a long way from uniting “the anxious and fractious wings of the Republican coalition,” said The Wall Street Journal. His liberal positions on immigration, campaign finance, and taxes are deeply off-putting to many Republicans, and nobody mistakes him for a social conservative. Still, with the populist Huckabee “trashing Wall Street and corporations,” and with the party’s Christian base uncomfortable with Romney’s Mormonism, McCain could yet turn out to be the candidate “best positioned to appeal to all Republican voters.”

What the columnists said

He’d be pretty well-positioned in the general election, too, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. If the situation in Iraq continues to improve, McCain’s early and loud support for the surge could put him on strong footing. If his opponent is Barack Obama, McCain will play the “experience” card against him even more relentlessly than Hillary Clinton has. And never discount the power of this former prisoner of war’s compelling life story.

McCain may indeed be the GOP’s best hope, said Jay Bookman in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But that just proves what poor shape the party is in. After seven years of George W. Bush, the American people are sick of “the old political feuds” and are clamoring for change. McCain, a Washington veteran who would be the oldest first-term president in history, would hardly seem like the man to deliver it.

That’s why nobody should count out Huckabee quite yet, said John Ellis in RealClearPolitics.com. After New Hampshire, McCain and Romney will be battling one another for the backing of the party’s establishment, Wall Street wing. That gives Huckabee more room to keep building his “Republican proletariat coalition,” based on a potent mix of “economic populism and compassionate Christianity.” Don’t look now, but the latest national Republican polls have Huckabee at or near the top. This thing is a long way from over.

What next?

If Republicans are looking for a clear front-runner, they may have to wait beyond the next spate of primaries. Romney is currently favored in Michigan (Jan. 15), in no small measure because many voters there fondly remember his father, a three-term governor. Huckabee’s evangelical Christianity should play well in South Carolina (Jan. 19), where half the population attends church weekly. Giuliani’s long-shot strategy of focusing most of his time and war chest on the large states faces its first test in Florida (Jan. 29), where he will face a rejuvenated McCain campaign. Many analysts now say that the GOP field could still be unsettled after Feb. 5, when Republicans in 19 states go to the polls.