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Joe Carter on the State of the Race

Joe Carter of the wonderful Evangelical Outpost blog - and Huckabee man - on the post-Florida state of the GOP race:

McCain didn’t just win Florida—he won the GOP nomination. Though many pundits, bloggers, and radio hosts will spend the next week trying to deny this obvious fact, it is the reality that we must face. Huckabee was critically wounded in South Carolina. Florida has finished off Giuliani. And Romney’s chances have also been crushed, though he thinks he is rich enough to buy an alternative reality. However, Romney can’t overcome the fact that when he faced McCain in NH, SC, and FL he was thrashed every time.

We have to give credit where its due. Team McCain has found a way to carry their candidate to victory. McCain’s campaign manager released the Path to the Nomination video back in December. At the time it seemed overly optimistic. Today, it appears prescient.

I’ll admit that I’m troubled by the idea of a McCain presidency. He still seems to me to be a cross between Conan and Charles Foster Kane: A fascinatingly flawed and haunted man whose main goal in life is to crush his enemies and see them driven before him.

I suspect my friends who crossed swords with McCain over campaign finance would agree. The McCain people launched a systematic scorched earth policy to destroy several solid and honorable conservative friends of mine who happened to believe in the First Amendment more than in St John’s effort to expunge his role in the Keating 5 by rewriting the Constitution.

Still, as John Mark Reynolds notes, “The good news is that unlike any Democrat running McCain is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, against torture, and for winning the War on Terror.” True enough. Also, having McCain as the nominee really ticks off all the people that unfairly trashed Huckabee (Rush, Mark Levin, et. al.). It may not be enough to ease my discomfort over McCain, but it nevertheless brings me great pleasure.

Interestingly, moreover, Joe’s particularly hostile to old Mitt Romney:

While it’s difficult to discern when the flip-flopping metamorphosis into a “full-spectrum” conservative was completed, we can be generous and say that it occurred in 2003, the first year he was Governor of Massachusetts. That would have given him a few months to backtrack from all his campaign promises. Now let’s put that date into perspective.

When Romney became a conservative he was 56 years old (4 years older than Mike Huckabee is today). The year Romney became a conservative we invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein. The year Romney became a conservative Ruben Studdard won American Idol, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy premiered on Bravo. The year Romney became a conservative is the year I started this blog.

Think about that for a moment. Not only have people being reading blogs longer than Romney has been a conservative but people have been reading this blog longer than Romney has been a conservative.

I think that’s rather well put. Very well put, in fact.