As I was driving home from doing a stint on Wolf Blitzer's CNN program yesterday afternoon, I got a call from an AP reporter Libby Quaid who asked me what I thought was going to happen in Florida.
I said that I thought, based upon the absentee ballot program, that Mitt Romney would win.
I then told her that I was correct in this sort of prognostication exactly 50% of the time.
Good thing, too, because I was wrong about the result in Florida. Not just wrong but, as Vice President Cheney might say, I was wrong, "Big time."
As you know, John McCain won Florida and won with relative ease. McCain who has been living hand-to-mouth since July, beat Romney who had both the money and the time to mount a serious campaign in Florida.
McCain also beat Rudy Giuliani who, despite having spent the better part of the past month in Florida, barely out-polled an absent Mike Huckabee for a third place finish.
This is now a two-man race between John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Rudy Giuliani will likely have left the race by the time you read this. There is no need to for him to spend the air fare flying to the CNN debate at the Reagan Library tonight.
Once the election went from being based upon national security to being based upon the economy, the rationale for a Giuliani candidacy evaporated.
Huckabee is only in the race to see if he can collect enough delegates to get a good speaking time at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul next Fall.
The other day I was talking to a person who is, as we say, "close to the Huckabee campaign." I asked him how they were going to get to the nomination.
He told me he didn't think they could get the nomination, but that Huckabee wanted to win enough delegates to be able to influence the Platform, Credentials and Rules committees at the Republican National Convention.
"So," I said, "the Huckabee campaign is reduced to being the equivalent of the small ultra-religious political party in the Israeli Knesset which holds the balance of power?"
He laughed. Ruefully, I think.
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