The Fat Lady Cometh

Regarding the Huckabee presidential campaign, a couple of weeks ago I noted that “The fat lady has yet to sing and she will not do so for a while, but she is warming up.” Indeed. Our corpulent songstress is waiting in the wings and may make an appearance quite soon - and by that I mean after the primaries coming up in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont on 04 March.

In yesterday’s Washington primary, John McCain leads with 49% of the vote, Huckabee places second with 22%, and (strangely enough) Mitt Romney places third with 20% (the most recent vote counts I saw were incomplete).

In yesterday’s Wisconsin primary, McCain took 55% of the vote, with Huckabee taking 37%, and Ron Paul taking 5%.

Regardless of the particular state involved, the turnout in Republican caucuses and primaries is trending downward due to the fact that McCain’s nomination is all but assured. Even so, McCain continues to rack up delegates out of proportion to his vote totals.

Speaking of which, though this editorial in The New Republic concerns the need for Democrats to reform their delegate selection process (and perhaps avoid a convention debacle in Denver), they note that the GOP would do well to heed their advice as well.

I cannot help but agree. Some delegate allocation oddities come immediately to mind: McCain edged Huckabee in South Carolina by a narrow margin (33% to 30 % as I recall), but took about 80% of the state’s delegates; in Washington, about half of the state’s delegates were awarded on the basis of caucuses held on 09 February and about half were awarded on the basis of yesterday’s primary; and here in the Peach State, delegates were distributed by a combination of congressional district and statewide results.

And don’t even get me started on “superdelegates.”

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