GOP still scrambled

While most news reports are talking of the wide-open Republican race for president, nearly every strategist I have heard who has been asked to predict the party's nominee for president says it will be John McCain, who still trails chief rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in the delegate count. And I hope that Romney's victory in Michigan's Republican primary yesterday (his first major win in the nominating contest) will severely dampen McCain's chance at the nomination. I don't by any means wish victory for Romney in any contest, but I would rather pad his ego for now than see the moderate, independent-voter-attracting McCain win the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton sure wouldn't beat him, as far as I'm concerned, and the only hope Democrats would have is the inexperienced Barack Obama (unless John Edwards somehow gets the nomination, which, as my friend who works for his campaign points out to me, might be the best thing for the Democratic party since some polls have shown he is the only Democratic nominee who could beat all potential Republican nominees in the general election). It would be interesting to see a showdown between the young, inspiring Obama and the old, straight-talking McCain, but I'd rather see any Democrat stomp flip-flopping Romney or foreign-policy-ignorant Huckabee. I was happy for formerly ailing McCain when he won the New Hampshire primary, but now I would be happy to see him lose all the other contests, especially the upcoming one in South Carolina, where Republicans are now focusing their efforts and the state where, since 1980, the eventual Republican nominee for president has won the primary.

Meanwhile, Democrats have been focused on Nevada, which holds is caucuses on Saturday (a day I will be away from Internet access, ouch). The three front runners, Clinton, Obama and Edwards, engaged in what has been described as a friendly debate in Las Vegas last night that started off with questions about race, which has been the hot-button topic lately between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. But the candidates played nice on those questions, and for the rest of the debate tried to avoid the topic all together. But Clinton and Obama are still battling it out in the courts, arguing over the legitimacy of holding caucuses in casinos. And so the fighting, although civil, continues.