The Dish

Alan Keyes is putting down a firewall:

Although Keyes will make excursions outside Texas as needed, and will continue his nationwide radio blitz to counter the media’s virtual blackout of his campaign, he plans to camp out in Texas until its primary on March 4. As most pundits agree, if Super Tuesday fails to produce a "presumptive" Republican nominee, Texas becomes all the more important as the last big prize of the primaries. For all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the Keyes campaign has moved to Texas.

(Hat tip: Wonkette.)

"I have no doubt McCain will never win the talk show primary, but he has won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Unless something very odd occurs (even more odd than what we’ve seen so far) he will be the nominee. Yes, first there is denial, then anger, next bargaining and depression but finally, acceptance," – Jennifer Rubin, Commentary.

"The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars," – Pat Buchanan on McCain’s message for the fall.

The small man in search of a balcony just fell off the first one he found.

K-Lo is almost resigned:

What if Fred had endorsed? What if Jeb had? Ah well.

Drum marvels:

Amazingly, it’s now quite possible that the Republican Party will pick a candidate before the Democrats will. I sure didn’t see that coming.

Will conservatives get on board? Daniel Casse says they will – if it’s Clinton. Not so much if it’s Obama:

If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, they will argue, persuasively, that Romney may have been a better GOP nominee. Against Obama, McCain is the old man versus the young man, the old way versus the new. Romney, at least, can make a much stronger argument against Obama’s soft-headed economics.

But if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, then we really do have one of the great national contests on our hand — and the McCain haters will have no choice but to get on board.

Translation: only a run against the Clintons can rally the GOP now. Still, this was cruel:

I still believe in Mitt’s dream. But man, that was one really dejected group of people standing behind him. They couldn’t even manage to seem excited as Mitt talked aimlessly about all the conservative claptrap he doesn’t really believe in.

Still, Michael Graham is bitter:

You think he supported amnesty six months ago? You think he was squishy on tax cuts and judicial nominees before? Wait until he has the power to anger every conservative in America, and feel good about it.

Every day, he dreams of a world filled with happy Democrats and insulted Republicans. And he is, thanks to Florida, the presidential nominee of the Republican party.

And on that note, I’m off to climb into a bottle of Bushmill’s. It’s going to be a LONG nine months.

But there’s always Hewitt:

The conservatives aren’t going to throw in the towel which means Romney has the chance to go from underdog to the last man standing opposite McCain next week.

Something has gone seriously wrong with the right when John McCain is not regarded as a conservative.
(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

The exit polls show the critical distinction between Romney and McCain supporters. Romney’s are still pro-Bush. McCain’s aren’t. If you’re fighting a general election this fall, you’ll need those who disapprove of Bush’s record – not the kool-aid drinkers. McCain also won Hispanics by a big margin – another key advantage for November. For good measure, McCain won among those who put the economy as their major worry. He also won Catholics and liberal or moderate Republicans. Interestingly, though, Huckabee’s voters picked McCain second by a large margin. Romney doesn’t appeal to blue-collar Republicans. In fact, in a primary with far fewer independents, McCain drew even with Romney among Republicans.

With Giuliani’s endorsement now expected, this is surely McCain’s nomination. I expected Romney to win. Few foresaw a convincing McCain victory. But that’s what this is. The Republicans now have to decide whether to keep their front-runner, who is far and away their best hope in November, or junk him for ideological, anti-illegal immigrant purity. I’m betting they will stick with McCain, as they should.

One final point: a McCain nomination means one thing for sure. The era of legal, authorized torture in America is coming to a close. This is a critical moment. And it is more than fitting that a man who endured torture at the hands of America’s enemies should now be picked to restore American honor after the disgrace of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld.

Obama goes after the Latino vote:

Jennifer Rubin wonders what will happen if McCain wins tonight. Just a couple of cranial explosions. But my skull won’t be so intact if Clinton wins either.

Republicans are understandably concerned. Mark Steyn:

Is Barack the new Blair? That is, if elected, will he be able (like Tone’s first ministry) to push through big transformative changes under cover of the sheer dazzle of his glamor?

I’m rooting for Hillary to win big. 

Big transformative changes? First I’ve heard of them.

Some sound advice:

Growing strong pluralist democracies in Pakistan and Bangladesh cannot be achieved by talking democracy up while giving tacit support to military backed autocrats. If you were to start a wish list you would ask for the building of institutional competencies framed by a rock-solid secular constitution. The role of the military in politics would have to be checked and it would have to be conditionally bound not to enter politics. Finally, Islamist parties would need to accept the role of sharia to cover only certain aspects of law, ethics and morality that are congruent with civil law. Divine law would be divested of its paramount position in regard to legislature. The last point is already in place; it is the pervasive role of the military that has been the greatest impediment to deal with. Made trickier since they get so much support from other powerful democracies in the west.

Democracies are inclusive by definition. In muslim-majority countries, this means it is not correct to deny the validity of Islamist parties which should be welcomed to operate as long as they demonstrate their willingness to play by the rules of the democratic process. Many of the mainstream Islamist parties already do: the AK in Turkey and Jamaati Islam in Bangladesh are adept political manouverers, playing the game as well the next secular party.