And those numbers aren't good for Mitt Romney. Mitt needed California to keep his overall delegate strategy viable and while opinion polls predicted he might win California, McCain snagged nearly every delegate in the Golden State with a 42% win compared to Mitt Romney's 34%.
Due to differences in interpreting state party rules for awarding delegates, nearly every major news organization shows a different delegate count for the GOP race (NYTimes, NBC, Wash. Post, Real Clear Politics ). However, one truth is undeniable: McCain now has a commanding lead ranging anywhere from the NY Times 689 to NBC's 720 delegates won out of a total of 1,191 needed for the nomination. Romney's total ranges from 244 to 312.
21 states and the District of Columbia have yet to hold a primary and the available pool of GOP delegates in those contests (again, open to some interpretation) range from 963 to 1264.
Old Washington insider, Charlie Black, a senior adviser to McCain put it this way:
The remaining contests account for roughly 963 delegates. For Mitt Romney to match our delegate count, he would have to win more than 50 percent of those delegates. And, he would have to win nearly every single delegate still available in order to become the nominee. And, many of these contests are proportional, so Mitt will have to win by big margins in many states to garner every last delegate. For example, in this weekend’s Louisiana primary, he would have to win the with more than 50 percent of the vote in order to win (1191 delegates to win, 963+236=1,199).
With Mike Huckabee still a factor in this race, particularly in the South, and many contests moving forward proportional, the math is nearly impossible for Mitt Romney to win the nomination.
McCain needs only get one third of the remaining delegates to cinch the nomination on the first ballot. It's unlikely at this point that the Stop McCain movement has enough gas left in the tank to prevent that from happening.
The next move is up to Romney and his speech Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington will be closely watched by all with an interest in this race.
Meanwhile McCain will also address CPAC after snubbing the group last year. He understands that without conservative support it's hard to see how he could win a general election. GOP strategist Greg Mueller summed up the importance of conservatives in the general election: "the conservative base is made up of those people who go out and knock on doors and make phone calls for the nominee. You need their enthusiastic support to win.”
And McCain has made a career out of sticking it to conservatives. Again, I'll remind readers what McCain told me personally in November when I asked him about conservative disagreements with him on issues. He said directly that if we disagreed with him on the issues raised in that meeting that we conservatives "shoud not vote for him.... I'm not your candidate" he said.
Now of course not only is McCain asking us to vote for him, but to help him win. I figure that the libs and moderates who supported him and didn't even bother to show themselves before he started to win can carry the water on this one. After all, they believe as McCain does in manmade global warming, preventing the "torture" of monsters intent on killing thousands of Americans and bringing Gitmo terrorists to the U.S. and granting them full Constitutional rights.
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