Black Box Report

The resurrection of John McCain is now complete. He's no longer the "presumptive" GOP nominee, it's now official, and conservative blogs are offering their congratulations:

Lots of pundits crossed McCain off the list of contenders before the first votes were recorded...Most voters don't pick candidates by reviewing a checklist of issues. Most voters try to size up the candidate's character, temperament and stature, and are willing to vote for candidates across what we ideologues would consider a broad philosophical range...While I disagree with him on a number of issues, I'm not sorry to see him as our nominee.

In other words, "We ideologues tried our hardest to get a more hardcore, fringe-ier candidate nominated, but we failed because the electorate is more moderate than we'd like it to be. C'est la vie."

From being an under-funded and marginalized moderate just a few months ago, John McCain won the war of attrition with his party's base and is now the last man standing. And faced with that mathematical reality, Mike Huckabee has gone Hucka-bye, for now:

Huck drops out of the race and pledges to work with McCain in a kind of a love fest. Prediction: We've far from seen the last of Mike Huckabee -- in fact, I think he's a frontrunner for the nomination in 2012 if McCain doesn't win. History has shown how candidates keep running their way from the fringe to the mainstream -- remember Reagan? I think that's why Huck stayed in so long, for 2012.

And did I say McCain was the last man standing? Sorry, I almost forgot, technically, Ron Paul is still in this thing, even as he gets what will be his only victory this year:

Ron Paul has been re-elected to Congress in the Fourteenth District of Texas. No Democrat has filed to run against him, so winning the GOP nomination has assured him re-election.
......
With Huckabee out and Bush endorsing McCain, how long will Paul stay in the GOP race? I've called the presidential campaign and have no answer yet, but obviously getting re-elected was the last real moment of truth in a now utterly Quixotic campaign. Paul is free, as Kucinich was in 2004, to stick around as long as he wants and hope that there are anti-McCain protest votes to be had in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, etc and etc. Wracking up some delegates and speaking at the RNC: That's still a realistic goal.

And perhaps that's all he wanted in the first place, a little attention. But McCain's the official nominee now, and as such, gets the dubious honor of going to the White House and getting the endorsement of perhaps the most unpopular politician in the land:

One thing is clear. With McCain as the nominee, it's business as usual for the GOP. The event is a symbol that a McCain White House would be the same as the Bush White House.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.