Primary Wrap

I'm getting a late start on this tonight, so it'll probably be short. But the big news is that the Mittster pulled it off! It was do or die for the Romney campaign tonight, and they did. Mitt finally got himself a gold (I know--it was a tired analogy the first time he used it, and I'd imagine that pretty much everybody's sick of it by now. But this definitely puts a dent in McCain's position as frontrunner. They've had three four different Republican contests, and they've had three different winners. Of course, I don't want to appear as though I'm gloating, because the Democrats have had two official contests and two winners. (Tonight in Michigan doesn't count because the national Democratic Party didn't sanction the primary and there are no actual delegates at stake--still, Hillary did pretty well against uncommitted, with both Obama and Edwards having withdrawn their names.) Romney got 39 percent of the vote, with McCain coming in second with 30 percent. Huckabee trailed quite a ways back with 16 percent, ahead of Ron Paul with 6 percent and Fred Thompson with 4. Rudy Giuliani, who pulled in 3 percent, continued his crafty strategy of losing big until he wins by pulling something out of his hat. Any day now, I'm sure.

Elsewhere, it's official: Mike Huckabee wants to be a mullah when he grows up. You can't get much purer as a religious right candidate than wanting to get God into the Constitution. God's not there now by design because, as you may remember, the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, set up a freedom of religion. It's hard to be free to pursue whatever religion you're driven to if one in particular is sanctioned by the state. But Huckabee, apparently, is wiser than the founders. He wants to make the U.S. into a more Christian nation. At least you can't accuse him of being a stealth candidate. Our pal Don Byrd has more at his church/state blog.