Mitt Romney is dropping out of the Republican race, leaving a three way race between Huckabee, Ron Paul, and John McCain. Amazingly, the GOP nominating process has whittled down the field to three candidates that respectively make each of the three big conservative constituencies skin crawl. Ron Paul is anathema to the hawks, Huckabee to the Wall St. types, and McCain to the religious right and the xenophobes.
With most of the southern states already completed, there isn’t much room for Huckabee to score new victories, and he isn’t a very good receptacle for all the pent-up anti-McCain feeling in the Republican base. I wonder if Ron Paul will see any uptick in support, perhaps just as some kind of protest vote.
I’ve already heard speculation that Romney might transition his campaign into a race for John Kerry’s senate seat. That would be interesting, but I suspect it would just be a bigger waste of Romney’s fortune.
The Republicans are increasingly reminding me of a mortally wounded relationship where a couple cannot be reconciled because they’ve said too many things they can never take back. Too many conservative commentators have said things about both Huckabee and McCain that were so harsh that they cannot turn around and support them without sacrificing their integrity.
Fortunately, integrity does not appear to be highly valued within the modern conservative movement.
