Could a Guy Named After Baseball Equipment Ever Have Been President Anyway?

When Mitt Romney officially exited the presidential race (before Huckabee! crazy!), two things immediately popped into my mind grapes. First, how will this affect McCain? And second, well, how will this affect McCain (but for different reasons)?

Now that there is only one borderline insane candidate to soak up the social conservative vote instead of splitting it between two bat-shit crazies, can Huckabee actually beat McCain? My guess is, in some states, yes. Overall, no. Next up on the primary schedule is Louisiana and Kansas. Kansas is a bit of an anomaly: It is so conservative that it has a constitutional ban on gay marriage and in 1999 stripped its public-school curriculum of nearly all mention of evolution (the fight over evolution vs. creationism vs. intelligent design is still raging), yet it elected a Democratic governor in 2002 and re-elected her in 2006. WTF, Kansas? Anyway, Huckabee has a shot at pulling the upset here like he did in Iowa. If he can win both of these states and ride that momentum into Virginia (a typically conservative state that went heavily for Bush in '04) on Tuesday, he has a shot. Unlikely, but still scary. McCain, however, has a huge lead and still has more moderate states like Maryland, Wisconsin, and Ohio in the next few weeks, as well as uber-liberal Vermont.

If McCain does get the nomination (he will), will the Republican Party turn out to vote for him in November? I just talked to Alison, a longtime friend of the blog, about this: two relatively influential conservatives (and two more bat-shit crazies! wahoo!), James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Ann Coulter, satan, have already said they will not under any circumstances vote for McCain. What's their plan? Not to vote at all, which would quite possibly hand the election to the Democratic candidate? Or will they do what Dems did in '04 and turn out to vote for ABB (or ABC in their case -- which, I might add, is much catchier). McCain's independent draw could be completely negated by the conservative Republicans who choose not to vote.