Super Tuesday was a clear victory for Sen. John McCain, who now has 300 more delegates than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. After the landslide McCain boasted, "Although I've never minded the role of the underdog ... I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner." (Apparently McCain is now using the Royal "We.")

On the Democratic side things are far less certain. Sen. Hillary Clinton captured the big prizes -- California and New York -- but Sen. Barack Obama scored more delegates. Major media outlets are crowning Hillary as the Super Tuesday winner, but she had previously sworn to have the nomination locked up by now. Time is much kinder to Obama, and a possible Gore/Edwards endorsement could seal the deal.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee performed much better than expected, capturing many states in the South. Prior to Super Tuesday prominent analysts believed that Huckabee would drop out of the race today, but he has vowed to continue his campaign, angering the Romney camp because splitting the vote makes McCain's cakewalk that much cakier.

(In related news, at this very moment Mike Huckabee moaned with a drool-oozing grin: "Mmmmmmm.... caaaaaake....")

The voters have spoken....

Annnnnnnnnnd they're still speaking. A victor has been declared in only one state, West Virginia, where Mike Huckabee has secured the Republican delegates. The Romney campaign accused Huckabee and McCain of striking a "shady" deal to deprive the Mormon millionaire of votes. Romney also compared McCain to former Sen. Bob Dole, the failed 1996 GOP nominee. 

Obama has increased his prospects by nine percent since yesterday. He and Hillary are equally likely -- 49 and 50 percent respectively -- to secure the most votes. But voters in liberal strongholds Los Angeles and New Jersey have had trouble voting due to missing and malfunctioning machines. 

If you truly have no life, you can look at this slide show of polling places. At least it beats looking at the crumbling stock market. Will it even matter whom we elect when everyone resorts to cannibalism?

Super Tuesday is off to a dramatic start, as if primary voting in twenty-four states were not dramatic enough. Drudge is reporting that Los Angeles residents are unable to vote because of missing equipment. This could have a huge effect because California is the most important state in the union for delegates. (Let the conspiracy theories commence!)

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are wrestling for victory but many polls give McCain the edge. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is looking more like a VP contender. UPDATE: Huckabee wins West Virginia. Figures.

On the Democratic side, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who suffered a coughing fit during a discussion on health care, are neck-and-neck. Seventy-five percent of overseas absentee votes are for Obama.

Related: CNN has a state-by-state guide for primary expectations. Yesterday Jewcy reported that former Sen. John Edwards and former VP Al Gore will jointly endorse Obama sometime after Super Tuesday, according to an Obama campaign source.

Slate recently pointed out that Senator Hillary Clinton has some things in common with Tracy Flick, the protagonist of Election. But who do the other '08 candidates remind us of?

RUDY GIULIANI is Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit: a balding, bespectacled man who worked in law enforcement in the ‘80s, inspired fear in millions, and surrounded himself with weasels.

BARACK OBAMA is Peter Pan: Rival campaigns claim that Obama’s high-minded promises of “hope” and “change” instill “false hopes” in voters, but the youthful senator is not afraid to think “wonderful thoughts,” and hope that his campaign takes flight just like the hero of this "fairy tale."

MITT ROMNEY is Gordon Gekko from Wall Street: Eager to show off his business experience as global stock markets continue to plummet, the former CEO is touting his management background and extolling his personal fortune. He will also say anything to win.“Greed is good”? What do the focus groups say?



JOHN MCCAIN is Popeye: McCain spent last summer headed for disaster: He flopped in the polls, lacked in donations, and was widely considered a sad, beaten old man. But the grizzled Navy vet has enjoyed a boost of last-minute strength: Victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. If a single phrase sums up McCain, whether you like him or not, it’s “I am what I am." (This comparison has been noted elsewhere).



JOHN EDWARDS is Atticus Finch: Those legal chops. That southern voice. The strident progressive outlook. The hair. Why, it's none other than the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird. Isn't he lovely?



RON PAUL is Dale Gribble from King of the Hill. As a gun-loving libertarian with a Texan accent, Paul has quite a bit in common with this fictional redneck. Heck, Gribble is a hysterical conspiracy nut, and a good number of Paul supporters are 9/11 Truthers.




MIKE HUCKABEE is Dewey Cox from Walk Hard : With his rock star aspirations, friendly blank stare and deep southern drawl, the former Arkansas governor reminds us of this Alabama golden boy.

DENNIS KUCINICH is Rick Moranis: Kucinich has much in common with the Rick Moranis character from the 1993 music video “Tomorrow’s Girls.” They are both perceived as geeks, they both score with women who are out of their leagues, and both have spotted a UFO. The resemblance is out of this world.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney interacted with black voters on MLK Day, and showed the world what happens when an obtuse white multimillionaire tries to sound hip for the "urban" kids, quoting lyrics from "Who Let the Dogs Out?" and referring to a child's "bling bling."

On the Left: Sen. Barack Obama, who lost the Nevada Democratic caucus to Sen. Hillary Clinton, accuses her campaign workers of fraud and voter suppression. He is also criticizing her husband's role in her campaign, and so are leading Democrats such as Sen. Ted Kennedy. Hillary and Obama continue to grapple for the support of African-American voters, especially over the MLK Day weekend. Aides to John Edwards confess that they don't expect him to win a single primary state but he vows to stay in the race anyway: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." (Aren't there laws that make people stop you when you waste an absurd amount of money for a jackpot that you will never win?)

Winner This Week: Hillary -- but her campaign seems to be getting sleazier and sleazier, and this could backfire in the general election if Obama supporters refuse to vote for her along with 50 percent of America.

On the Right: Sen. John McCain proclaims himself the GOP front-runner after winning the South Carolina Republican primary. (His victory was an upset over Mike Huckabee, who pandered to bigots who won't admit that the North won the fucking Civil War states' rights enthusiasts.) But Mitt Romney won the Nevada caucus, and his $250 million fortune gives him an edge, so McCain's declaration might be premature. Romney and McCain will now contend with Giuliani in Florida, where the former New York City mayor has put all his chips on the table. (He is losing at home.) Fred Thompson ate a turkey sandwich -- nobody noticed.

Winner(s) This Week: McCain and Romney. But McCain better not get arrogant -- his age will soon become a factor, and Romney simply looks much more vital. (But it's only because the focus group told him to look that way -- if they had preferred a more wrinkled man, Romney would currently be sitting on a tropical beach with no sunscreen, getting sand in his special Mormon underwear.)

Last Week: Race-Baiting Dems Vs. Nutty Repubs

The Republicans are having a seminar-room style debate in New Hampshire, and they've just concluded a good 10-20 minutes on health care reform. The only one who seemed to know anything about healthcare policy other than "socialism bad" was Mitt Romney, who --- for possibly the first time in a major public event since the beginning of the campaign --- gave a detailed defense of the health care plan he enacted in Massachusetts, a kind of public-private hybrid that's supposed to provide universal coverage. That sounds interesting --- I'd like to hear a lot more about it.

At last, we got to see a bit of the competent, managerial, innovative liberal Republican platform I had hoped Romney would have run on from the beginning. To be sure, Romney's exposition of his health care policy probably didn't score very well with Republican primary voters, but it's not as if pretending to have had a Damascene conversion on every position he held prior to 2006 is working all that well for him either.

UPDATE: Bill Richardson (slight paraphrase): "When I was Energy Secretary, I worked on securing fissionable material with the Soviet Union...One of the first things I would do as president is sign a non-proliferation treaty with the Soviet Union." What the hell? At least when Fred Thompson goofs like this, he has senility as an excuse. Somebody give Richardson the hook.

UPDATE: As Josh Marshall notes, there was one moment of emotional pique in the Democratic debate, all three main contenders seemed to spar pretty well, it's not clear who got the best of it, and from there the debate drifted into a dying fall. For what it's worth, Obama has now jumped ahead of Clinton at Intrade:

Clinton: 42.5/42.6 (-8.6)

Obama: 53.1/54.0 (+8.3)

N.B. to David N. Friedman: There used to be a lot of liberal Republicans, like, for example, George Romney. Go here and search "Conservative vs. Progressive Republicanism" to see a clip of Jacob Javits and William F. Buckley discussing what a liberal Republican is --- and Javits explain why he likes the term "liberal." A liberal Republican isn't the same thing as a liberal simpliciter. That tradition is basically moribund today, but Romney Jr. governed Massachusetts as a liberal Republican, and the staggering phoniness and clumsiness with which he presents himself as a National Review cover boy today underlines the implausibility of his having had a genuine conversion coincide neatly with the beginning of his national ambitions. The fact that, for one moment tonight, Romney finally expressed himself fluidly and naturally belies the idea that his only mode of expression is a phony and clumsy one. Which is to say that the Romney campaign, to date, has been a months-long, shameless eruption of bullshit.

UPDATE: More Intrade movement, this time on the Republican side:

McCain: 33.1/33.9 (+0.5)

Giuliani: 31.2/32.0 (+4.5)

Huckabee: 14.5/15.7 (+0.1)

Romney: 10.2/12.0 (-4.1)

Two observations here: First, Romney is bleeding confidence like a punctured artery. That big bid/ask spread suggests traders with stock in Romney are doing their damnedest to preserve a little value before they sell, but nobody's buying. Romney's on his way to becoming a penny stock. Second, Giuliani is bouncing back, and is basically even with McCain. Currently, however, the media have written off Giuliani (myself included) in much the same way they wrote off McCain a few years months ago [odd slip --- it was very late when I wrote this --- DK].

How to explain the Giuliani mini-rally? It might just be an epiphenomenon of the Romney collapse, but here's one potential story of a Giuliani comeback: The Republican debate tonight was a pretty ugly pile-on of Romney --- McCain was frankly immature, cackling like Victor Von Doom as David Weigel put it --- and if Romney is going down, he's got the money and organization to stay in a long time and do his best to take down his opponents if he wants to, and I think he does.

If Romney stays in through South Carolina and Michigan, that splits the non-dogpatch vote going into Super Duper Tuesday. If John McCain crushes Romney and gets the GOP establishment behind him, there won't be any oxygen left for Giuliani. On the other hand, if Romney stays in and can fight at least to an indecisive result in New Hampshire and Michigan --- that is, if there isn't a clear anti-Huckabee before Feb. 5 --- Giuliani may still be viable. It's a long shot, but the logic dooming every single Republican candidate also means it's premature to count any of them out.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting the prediction markets are anything but a measure of conventional wisdom on how things will play out. On Thursday, a trader with some money to invest could have made a very safe and very profitable bet arbitraging the discrepancy between Obama's winning-Iowa price and his winning -the-nomination price (well, it's not a true arbitrage, but you get the idea).

The Concord Monitor of (I assume) Concord, New Hampshire, published an anti-endorsement of Mitt Romney that's been making the rounds. As funny as the premise of the piece is --- we the editorial staff have no idea who you should vote for, but make sure it's not Romney --- what makes it unintentional comedy gold is the breathless seriousness and solemnity with which it endorses and defends the Granite State's divine right to decide whom the rest of us are allowed to decide between for president:

When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it.

If the CM's editorial board wants to make sure that no one ever again mistakes New Hampshirers' extra-sensory ability to peer into a politician's souls for an oversized sense of entitlement, James Randi will pay them a million bucks to demonstrate their special gifts. Alternatively, the anti-endorsement suggests, the people of New Hampshire can prove their skill at divination pro bono by rejecting the fraudulent, cynical hypocrite Romney.

Okay, there's no doubting that Romney is a fraudulent, cynical hypocrite. But relative to the field he's running in, that's not such a bad thing. Romney's transparent pandering and willingness to adopt absolutely any position he thinks will make him popular suggest to me that if he ever gets to be president, he'll be a Republican Jimmy Carter, completely hapless and ineffectual, swaying this way and that with the vicissitudes of opinion polls, and accomplishing little to nothing (he's got the sweater thing down already). The one and only campaign promise Romney would be certain to follow through on is his pledge to talk to his lawyers in a crisis situation that calls for immediate discussion. After the last seven years, total sclerosis in government sounds fairly appealing to me.

In any case, what Romney lacks is that precious, rare, and inscrutably vague quality of authenticity, which, in the superficial world of Washington punditry, is taken to entitle those who possess it to respect, regardless of the contents of the views a politician authentically holds. That's why John McCain gets such fawning press, while Romney's press is awful; it's why, for example, Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan adopt a ring-smooching pose before McCain when, by the lights of Klein and Sullivan's self-professed views, McCain is on the wrong side of the most important issue in a generation.

Moreover --- and this especially comes through in the Klein piece --- McCain's claim to respect on the basis of his authenticity is supposed to apply to all of us, no matter how reprehensible we take McCain's views to be (very reprephensible in my case). Why should this be? If X holds a belief that we take to be wrong and pernicious, how could the fact that X holds her belief with utmost sincerity transform either X or her wrong, pernicious belief into an appropriate object of admiration, let alone someone or something we're obliged to admire? What's going on is what Simon Blackburn calls "respect creep":

"Respect," of course is a tricky term. I may respect your gardening by just letting you get on with it. Or, I may respect it by admiring it and regarding it as a superior way to garden. The word seems to span a spectrum from simply not interfering, passing by on the other side, through admiration, right up to reverence and deference. This makes it uniquely well placed for ideological purposes. People may start out by insisting on respect in the minimal sense, and in a generally liberal world they may not find it too difficult to obtain it. But then what we might call "respect creep" sets in, where the request for minimal toleration turns into a demand for more substantial respect, such as fellow-feeling, or esteem, and finally deference and reverence.

The case Blackburn has in mind is religious people's demand for respect, which generally begins as an assertion of a right to practice freely, and culminates in a claim that refusing to join in is itself an affront to religious freedom. The difference in the political case is that a pontiff of authenticity like McCain doesn't make the claim to respect on his own behalf; he has starstruck auxiliaries in the media, from Klein and Sullivan to the Manchester Union Leader editorial board, to make that claim for him. Indeed, the fact that so many people unaffiliated with McCain testify to his authenticity is part of what establishes his authenticity in the first place. (Incidentally, if you've been wondering how Andrew Sullivan's short list of Republican candidates came down to the most libertarian candidate and one of the most statist, well, there you go.)

Romney, like McCain, claims to hold many beliefs that are dangerous and crazy. Unlike McCain, Romney is completely insincere in his beliefs. Good for him. (Hey, by the way, it looks like Romney got a bum rap about his father marching with MLK, though to be sure, he doesn't help himself by his inability to form non-bullshit sentences.)

For a more general defense of hypocrisy, see here.

I'm still not voting for him. That's a figure of speech meaning I'm still not voting for him.

Give the appalling Mitt Romney a little credit. The Big Speech of ten days ago contained one striking image for which I hope someone on his payroll got a bonus:

I have visited many of the magnificent cathedrals in Europe. They are so inspired ... so grand ... so empty. Raised up over generations, long ago, so many of the cathedrals now stand as the postcard backdrop to societies just too busy or too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer.

He is, of course, right: church attendances in many European countries have declined to the extent that in Britain, for example, there are now more regular attendees at mosque every week than in our churches - fewer than 10% of the population are regular churchgoers and that is expected to halve in the next generation.

Romney chose to attribute this to the state establishment of religion(s) in European nations (but then, as the adherent of a minority faith, he would, wouldn't he?), but there are any number of equally plausible theories which might explain falling attendances, not least the rise of empiricism and the development - primarily, but not exclusively, in Western Europe - of the scientific method, which in turn allowed us to build an explanation of the world around us that did not rely on a God, gods or Flying Spaghetti Monster to make it tick.

Irrespective of the reasons for the different outlooks Europeans and Americans have towards religion in the 21st century, my problems with Mitt Romney have nothing to do with Mormonism and everything to do with moronism. Suspicions were first aroused back in May - which for a foreigner, I reckon, puts me in on the ground floor - when Mitt contributed this razor-sharp analysis of the jihadist menace facing the West:

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us. And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

To say that this is an analysis which would shame a Fox news anchor is not just an easy shot, because Brit Hume doesn't have the nuclear codes. Either way, I began to wonder if there was anything between this guy's collar and his haircut. But I still didn't have much to go on, until a few weeks later from the Boston Globe came the infamous tale of the family dog Seamus, whose carrier Romney had attached to the roof of their Chevy station wagon for a 12-hour drive to Ontario, entirely oblivious to the possibility that bombing along the Interstate at 70 mph might terrify the mutt:

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.

This, the Globe hilariously opined, was "a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management." To me he just came across as a wanker. Say what you like about Brit Hume, but to the best of my knowledge he's never driven 12 hours with a dog strapped to the roof of his fucking car. (Fortunately, dog lovers have a means of redress.)

But the more serious issues cannot be ignored. As many commentators pointed out, not least Jewcy's own Michael Weiss on these pages, Romney's supposed disavowal of a "religious test" for the Presidency was as disturbing as it was self-serving, because it was phrased carefully to be inclusive only of people of faith (such as, er, Mitt Romney and GOP primary voters) and made no mention whatever of those of us who profess none, or even whose faith does not inform their political decisionmaking. The crass crescendo of his speech - "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom", which will be news to the people of Sweden and Saudi Arabia respectively - only served to underline the distance that separates modern American politics from its European analogues.

In Britain we have a slightly different kind of ‘religious test'. Tony Blair phrased it best in an interview aired some time after he stepped down last summer; "you talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you're a nutter". His Rove-esque media handler, Alistair Campbell, famously said to reporters that "we don't do God", because there was real terror within the Blair camp that any overt mention of religious faith, no matter how carefully spun, would alienate far more voters than it would impress.

When it comes to religion, British people really do play up to your stereotype; it's not really something we like to discuss in polite society - indeed, something slightly embarrassing. To the vast majority of Europeans - including those, like me, who count ourselves as being of the Right - a statement such as that of Mike Huckabee that "if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it", would be grounds for instant dismissal as a serious contender for public office at just about any level.

No doubt Team Huckabee congratulated themselves afterwards on finding a formula that allowed them to sidestep a potentially tricky question but, as with the ridiculous Romney, I could only marvel at how close this dolt is to being the Republican nominee for the White House. (Hitchens gives him both barrels in Slate today, and as ever with the Dude it's an unqualified joy.) Indeed, Huckabee said later on in that same debate that "it's interesting that that question would even be asked of somebody running for president". Well, they wouldn't have to ask it if they didn't suspect that you'd have such an off-the-charts barking mad answer, would they, you twat?

I don't mean to come across as a militant atheist in the Dawkins-Hitchens mould, because by and large I am not. Powerful personal faith has a range of corollaries, many of them very positive - and there are times when I envy the certainty that religious belief can bring. Nor do I write this in a spirit of transatlantic mockery or superiority, because God knows - if you'll pardon the phrase - that when I look at the politicians in my own country I am filled with unutterable despair.

Is the British religious test - requiring of politicians that any religious belief be kept firmly private and in the background - healthier than the American position, particularly but by no means exclusively the preserve of the GOP, that candidates must wear their faith on every shirtsleeve in a frantic effort to assure the voters that they are people of moral solidity who can be trusted with the great seal of office? Yes, I think it is, but that's not to say that you're wrong if you disagree. And that, finally, is the point; I have no intention of forcing my moral code, such as it is, on you, but I naturally suspect all politicians of wanting to force their beliefs on me. And when those beliefs have the force of God's hand behind them, I start to get very nervous indeed, irrespective of the purity of His servants' motives.