Mitt Romney makes it clear, very clear

There's been a lot of talk, including right here, about the future of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign after Super Tuesday especially if, as happened, despite his best transcontinental efforts Romney lost California to Sen. John McCain.

Romney made another of his well-spoken speeches last night as the results came in showing he won six states. He has scheduled a full budget and staff review for this morning, but he and Mike Huckabee got enough wins together to deny McCain a certain claim on the GOP nomination.

Later during the night, to underline the real point of that speech, his campaign sent out one paragraph from it. To really make certain that recipients of the e-mail got the point, they put the paragraph in boldface and in larger type. Here it is:

“One thing that's clear is this campaign's going on. I think there are some people who thought it was all going to be done tonight. But it's not all done tonight. We're going to keep on battling. We're going to go all the way to the convention. We're going to win this thing, and we're going to get to the White House."

-- Andrew Malcolm

Comments

[R. Dee Cozzens]

Can Someone Verify this for me? Some people will sell their souls to gain power if this is correct. We need honest men and women for this country.

The McCain campaign wasn’t content to let Romney have Bay County to himself Monday. William Ball, the former Secretary of the U-S Navy under the Reagan administration was in-town talking to the media and some of the

Ball says he supports McCain’s promise to bring the U-S Navy’s fleet up to 300-ships, and add hundreds of thousands of personnel to the ranks.

DNC: Lobbyist-Express, Not Straight-Talk Express, Drives McCain Campaign
|Published: February 02, 2008 8:31 AM

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being issued by the Democratic National Committee:

Trying to cement his place as the Bush establishment candidate, John McCain turned his back on his principles with a do-anything-to-win strategy that includes ignoring his past rhetoric on pork projects and the influence of lobbyists to benefit his presidential campaign. An independent review conducted by the advocacy group Public Citizen and released earlier this week "found that McCain has more bundlers -- people who gather checks from their networks of friends and associates -- than any other presidential candidate from either party." The review noted that "McCain has at least 58 federal lobbyists raising money for his campaign." [washingtonpost.com, 01/29/08]

"It's clear that the Lobbyist-Express, not the Straight-Talk Express, is what's driving John McCain's campaign," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "From staffing his campaign with lobbyists, to questions over his role as head of the Commerce and Indian Affairs Committees, to pork projects of his own, McCain has made it clear his credibility is not as important as his personal political ambitions."

Lobbyists Driving Double-Talk Express
McCain's Campaign Has More Lobbyist Bundlers Than Any Other. A review released this week by the advocacy group Public Citizen found that John McCain "has at least 58 federal lobbyists raising money for his campaign." Another 35 lobbyists were reported to be bundling for Rudolph Giuliani, who has now endorsed McCain. [washingtonpost.com, 01/29/08]

[Alan Reynolds]

With 86.8% of precincts in, McCain had 42% of the California districts, Romney had 33%. The rest of the right-of-center vote was split among Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, Sam Brownbeck, Fred Thompson, Tom Tancredo, etc. I'd add Rudy Giuliani to that list too, with 5% of the vote, because even though Rudy likes McCain's position on defense, some of us liked Rudy's views on taxes much better than McCain's.

In most other states McCain won, he also had less than half of the Republicans -- scarcely an overwhelming mandate.

So far, the voters' message to conservatives and libertarians (regardless of party) is "Divide and Be Conquered."