Bye Bye Johnny

Brad Plumer offers more evidence for Josh Marshall’s thesis that McCain is dead. They’re right. Essentially, McCain was always a longshot for the Republican nomination because (as 2000 demonstrated) he is distrusted by much of the evangelical base. To compensate, he hitched his wagon to 1)becoming Bush’s lickspittle, and 2)being a particularly visible and unrelenting Iraq cheerleader. And as Brad points out, this has worked out about as well as betting your live savings on Ball State to win the BCS, except with a lot more loss of life and money and damage to national security interests.

Given this, and also given that Giuliani’s potential campaign is a farce , the interesting question is, who could win the nomination? Mark Schmitt offers a good lay of the land. He thinks Romney has little chance (for plausible reasons, although it’s hard for me to say whether evangelicals will be able to deal with his Mormonism or not), and likes Gingrich. I think Brownback and Huckabee have the best shot of the candidates under discussion; again, I assume the former is something of a longshot, but 1)I don’t know enough, and 2)distancing himself from the war suggests some political savvy.

…Rox was on this last year.