McCain up, Edwards out, Giuliani never in

John McCain's Florida victory makes the Republican race a two-horse race, and I can't see how Mitt Romney is going to become a more attractive candidate by going more negative. There is plenty to worry the Democrats here - the Republicans look like they might now effectively settle on their nominee first, and they look like they will choose their most electable candidate.

McCain was keen to stress that this was a Republican only primary in his victory speech. Romney won the pro-Bush Republican vote; McCain won Republican voters who are critical of the President.

The excellent Jay Cost makes a very interesting point about this: that this at odds with McCain's championing of the surge in Iraq and Romney's running as a pro-change outsider, but that it chimes with who voters believe the candidates really are.

I think one reason has to do with the long memories of voters. McCain's reputation as an anti-Bush maverick is still quite ingrained in their minds .... There is a lesson in all of this about the limitations of political campaigns. They only do so much to shape the thinking of the American voter. Those who have held opinions about political figures for a long time are not going to be easily disabused of them, despite how many political ads are run or adjustments in messaging are made. I think this hints at a mistake the Romney campaign made - it pivoted too late to a message about fixing Washington.

There is a message in there for Hillary Clinton too.

I don't agree with all of John Edwards' positions - but it was great to see a credible Presidential candidate putting poverty in the US absolutely front and centre of a major campaign.

What happens to John Edwards' supporters is going to be a crucial factor in the Obama-Clinton race, and it is very difficult to call. The candidate was siding with Obama - as 'change' versus the 'status quo' - but the demographics of the Edwards vote could favour Hillary Clinton.

Rudy Giuliani's failed bid will be taught in campaign school as an example of how to get everything wrong. Clearly, it was a mega-flop, and the strategy was too clever by half.

But I am not sure all of the criticism of a miscalculated campaign strategy is fully merited. To argue that Giuliani's later states strategy was the problem depends upon the counter-factual argument that he could have been much better placed had he fought seriously in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. How well could he have done at best? Would he have gone into Florida with a better shot if he'd somehow squeaked a third place somewhere?

Still, the 2008 race offered the best possible opportunity for this unorthodox approach. And even this race could not stay open enough. It will not be a strategy that anybody will try again.

Even if Giuliani ran the wrong campaign, perhaps the real lesson is a more fundamental one. If you are a pro-life New Yorker, don't make a serious bid for the Republican nomination.

Before the spin comes in ...

Every campaign will want to declare that they are on the road to victory.

Real Clear Politics has a good ready reckoner as to what they really need

And here's a good spin explaining the thinking behind the campaign strategy we won't find out anything about tonight - Rudy Giuliani's unconventional bid for the Republican nomination.

The Republican race

I want the Democrats to win in November. But there is widespread dissatisfaction among Republicans at the choices they have, and how the race has failed to crystallise.

It is difficult to know what to make of tonight's Republican contest in Iowa. The Mitt Romney - Mike Huckabee contest for first place may best be seen as a potential eliminator from which the right-wing contender for the nomination will emerge.

Somehow, the Mike Huckabee campaign is giving the impression of having turned into a serious Presidential bid. It shouldn't be. Huckabee has some charm, some startlingly absolutist right-wing views and no Presidential credentials at all, especially on foreign policy. Picking the low point of his campaign to date is difficult.

Was it attributing his poll surge to divine intervention?

There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people.

Not having heard of the Iran intelligence report the day after it had dominated the news agenda was worrying.

But he topped that this week as his spat with Mitt Romney got nastier. Huckabee's decision to defend John McCain from negative Romney attacks - John McCain is a hero - was a smart move. Somewhat, less smart was declaring that he was resisting the temptation to go negative himself in retaliation - before showing the negative attack ad he had decided not to air at his press conference. Huckabee is putting himself beyond satire.

Mitt Romney is deeply unimpressive. Apart from the high profile issue of his being a Mormon, he stirkes me as a something of an identikit Republican, running a nasty, negative campaign from the Lee Atwater-Karl Rove textbook. ( Joe Klein's Tale of Two Romneys nails this). His credentials to be President don't seem to stretch that far beyond running the Winter Olympics. He has already struggled with his various campaign misstatements.

I haven't been able to work out what Fred Thompson is for. Neither, I think, has the candidate.

For a long time, Rudy Giuliani seemed the Republican most likely to threaten the Democrats in November. He is a worrying prospect as President. Nuance would not be the watchword of his foreign policy. But the Democrats have not yet worked out how to counter their vulnerability on national security in the General Election - and a single issue 9/11 Giuliani campaign could exploit that. Giuliani's problem has always been the strategy to secure the nomination, given that he is beyond the pale for a significant part of the Republican base. He is rewriting the rules of the primary contest. It will be another month before we know whether his unconventional gameplan of marginalising the early contests has paid off, or has cost him his frontrunner status.

My Republican pick is John McCain. He has the credibility and experience to be President, as the (London) Times set out in a well argued editorial this week. I don't agree with his views on foreign policy - and he has done much to bolster President Bush - but he is a candidate who commands respect. McCain has problems with the Republican base but perhaps also, by trying to reposition towards them, with the independent voters he appealed to in 2000. He has struggled for momentum, but seems to be picking up as the voters think seriously about the Presidency.

I suspect Huckabee or Romney would be easier for the Democrats to defeat in November. But Clinton, Obama or Edwards are capable of winning against any of the Republican nominees. And, given that the US Presidency is at stake, it might be a good idea for both parties to put up somebody who could do the job.

Does Rawalpindi matter in Iowa?

The parochial concern on the 2008 campaign trail was the need to appear Presidential in responding to news from Pakistan.

Despite the Bhutto assassination throwing US policy into deep flux, most candidates realised that their immediate responses should simply mirror the statements of President Bush and other world leaders - expressing shock and sympathy at the tragic news and pledging to redouble efforts for democracy and against terrorism.

Still, Mike Huckabee messed it up, bizarrely apologising for the assassination, before correcting his remarks later.

Fred Thompson was particularly concerned to make sure that people around the world didn't get the wrong idea from the apology.

With more time to consider, Huckabee put up a policy argument. The Bhutto assassination showed why the US needed to build a border fence with Mexico to keep out Pakistanis.

“We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country", he said.

Further clarifications defending these remarks did not seem to clarify much.

Mitt Romney had picked a bad day to argue that foreign policy experience doesn't matter all that much, though stressing the Reagan rather than the Dubya precedent to make his case:

“If the answer for leading this country is someone that has a lot of foreign policy experience, we can just go down to the State Department and pick up any one of the tens of thousands of people who’ve spent all their life in foreign policy.

Rudy Giuliani and John McCain stressed the opposite message to highlight their own experience.

On the Democrat side, the issue played to Hillary Clinton's experience on the international stage. Her personal relationship with Bhutto allowed her to stress that she will be ready on "day one" for the international demands of the Presidency. Perhaps for that reason, the Obama camp took an aggressive approach, bringing the issue back to the question of judgment over Iraq, sparking controversy about comments by Obama's strategist David Axelrod, who seemed to imply that Clinton's support of the Iraq war had contributed to the causes of the assassination.

Meanwhile, John Edwards placed a personal call to President Musharraf himself to press the case for democratic reform.

UPDATE: CNN quotes Huckabee campaign staff, explaining that his immigration comments were intended to distract attention from the fact that he has "no foreign policy credentials". Let's hope Iowa and New Hampshire care more about foreign policy experience than that.