A Primary Update, Vindicating a Previous Proclamation, and Briefly on Fred Thompson:

First in the interest of reminding the esteemed gentleman from Michigan about something he and I said in a previous conversation about the New Hampshire primary won by Sen. John McCain:

me: I think Romney can lose NH and still be the nominee

Kevin: no he can't

me: but he needs to win elsewhere. Wyoming. Michigan. Somewhere in an early primary. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa January 8, 2008)]

As Romney won in both Wyoming and Michigan and leads in the Republican delegate count by a significant margin{1} while his closest in the delegate count{2} has peaked already and the other major challenger at the moment having less than a third of the count thus far{3}, it should be obvious that New Hampshire will not be the deciding factor in the Republican nomination. Or as I noted over lunch earlier today in a short chat with my esteemed colleague from Michigan on the matter:

me: any time you want to admit your error is fine with me ;-p

Kevin: which one? where am i in error? lol

me: how's that for an intro?

I believe I predicted that Mitt would not be out of it if he did not win NH. you said he would [and] ironically your state was the pivot.

Kevin: well i didn't say he would drop out, just that he'd be crushed. I was wrong lol. now mitt has a ticket to super tuesday but he still needs to win Florida I think.

me: I was listening to him on Glenn Beck today. i must say, [Romney] appears strategically astute. Beck noted that he was behind in SC. Mitt admitted that but noted that he believes he will win Nevada which has more delegates than SC.

Kevin: it does and there's a chance he will. SC is more symbolic though.

me: my point is, Mitt is counting delegates, not keying in on specific primaries. he already leads in that area and is looking to build on it more even if the states he wins are not symbolically huge.

Kevin: well if he survives until super tuesday with a good running, McCain is in trouble, since these primaries are party only.

me: agreed. [Chat circa 12:30pm today]

Despite his second place spot in delegate count, by all appearances Huckabee has peaked. He did well in winning Iowa where he got 17 of his 19 delegates but he has done poorly since. McCain got half of his delegates in New Hampshire and the others from a fourth place finish in Iowa and a second place finish in Michigan.

In other words, though Huckabee has more delegates than McCain, there is no evidence that Huckabee has any momentum at all. Compared to candidates with lower delegate totals who have not won a primary (i.e. Thompson with 6, Paul with 2, Guiliani with 1, and Hunter with 1), by all appearances, they could catch fire on Super Tuesday whereas Huckabee appears to have used up all his momentum.{4}

With regards to one of those candidates who your host is hoping will show some sign of catching on soon, here is a bit that we wrote in a combox thread on him in dark green font -the words of the person we were responding to will be in italics...

I wonder how much of the "lack of energy" is media fabricated...

An "energetic executive" is what we need but the media's idea of "energetic" and the Founders' idea are significantly different.

I would not give the msm's dictums on that too much credit -remember all that talk about Reagan "sleeping through cabinet meetings"??? Compared to the relentless minutiae-focused approaches of his predecessor and successor, I would prefer a president who "slept through cabinet meetings" even if Reagan did that and he rarely did that in reality.

Thompson is in my top tier of candidate preferences. I would not have a problem voting for him if he can get a fair shake from the msm to present his message. I fail to see what the msm is worried about -both Thompson and Hunter are treated as Tancredo clones when they quite obviously are not.

And though Paul is a complete loon, I think he should be allowed into the debates too -if these candidates are to fall then it should be of their own making, not the media proclaiming, pronouncing, and defining as dogma that they have when primary and caucus season has only just begun.

Readers will also notice that we are going solely off of actual delegates thus far, not projections. So for all that talk about Clinton having twice the delegates as Obama (190 vs. 103) and Edwards (51) half of Obama, those are projections and not actual counts. When we look at the actual counts they are nowhere near that.{5} So make sure you read the fine print before accepting any msm source on the matter in question. Well that and/or just remember to read Rerum Novarum when we deign to post anything here of course. Our non-sports prognosticating is usually pretty accurate on the whole after all.

Notes:

{1} As of this morning, Romney has 48 delegates.

{2} As of this morning, Huckabee has 19 delegates.

{3} As of this morning, McCain has 15 delegates.

{4} This is not to say that he will not get more delegates of course, only that traditionally a candidate that starts off as he did and then declines is usually done whereas a candidate who starts off weak can catch fire later on traditionally.

{5} The actual counts of delegates for the Democratic candidates thus far are as follows:

Clinton: 28-29
Obama: 28-30
Edwards: 21

The reason for the range on the first two is it is unclear which number is correct from our sources as of this writing.