McCain edges closer to GOP nomination

Mike Huckabee’s showing Tuesday will keep him in the race.

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

WASHINGTON — John McCain edged toward the Republican nomination in Super Tuesday’s electoral day of reckoning despite a conservative backlash that continues to tear at the GOP.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each won key states while dividing hundreds of delegates as the closely-matched Democratic contestants dug in for a history-making tussle that could last into spring.

McCain’s victories in delegate-rich Illinois, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere left the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero ever closer to nailing down the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney’s campaign was looking for a jolt to stay relevant — and to signal whether he should pump more of his vast personal wealth into stemming McCain’s momentum.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, who won Alabama, West Virginia and his home state of Arkansas, captured a tidy cache of delegates, a showing that stunted Romney’s advance and added delegates that will assure Huckabee of a presence at the Republican convention in St. Paul.

Missouri, Illinois and many other states moved their primaries forward to get more say in the nomination process, which many believed would end after Tuesday night. Republicans in several of those key states said by their votes Tuesday that McCain was the party’s best bet in a presidential race in which Democratic turnout and cash are surging.

While locking up the 1,191 delegates needed for the nomination was out of McCain’s reach Tuesday, he showed the big-state strength that could squeeze Romney out of the race. Nonetheless, exit polls showed that McCain continues to have problems appealing to social conservatives and evangelicals in the GOP.

McCain scored some key triumphs despite a late drive by conservative opinion leaders to derail his candidacy. The uprising was reflected in conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s declaration on the eve of the vote that he’d rather see the Democrats win the White House than McCain.

The Republicans were even skirmishing over party icons, with Romney on Tuesday dismissing former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole’s entreaty to Limbaugh to, in effect, cool it. “Well, it’s probably the last person I would have wanted to have write a letter for me,” Romney said, speaking on Fox TV, of the Republicans’ 1996 presidential nominee.

McCain labeled Romney’s words “disgraceful” and called on him to apologize.

Romney may have benefited in some areas of the country from the attacks on McCain, but it remained uncertain whether it would be enough to change the course of the campaign.

A wealthy businessman and former governor of Massachusetts, Romney has invested at least $35 million of his personal wealth in his candidacy thus far. He declined this week to say how much more he was willing to spend, asserting that “the contributions from my own wallet are something which are between my wife and myself and are clearly budgeted.”

A further Republican split — this one between social conservatives and economic conservatives — showed up in Huckabee’s victories, made possible by his backing from the Christian right.

Huckabee’s chance to become the nominee appeared remote. But in his unspoken alliance with McCain — whom he said he’ll vote for if he loses — Huckabee had prospects for piling up more delegates in upcoming contests in Virginia (Feb. 12), Texas (March 4) and perhaps even Mississippi (March 11) if his underfinanced operation can endure.

“It’s about winning delegates,” Huckabee said, vowing to continue his race. “States give you a good buzz and a good feeling, but somebody has to have 1,191 delegates.”

The Democratic contests took place in a less contentious atmosphere, with voters picking between two popular and lavishly-funded aspirants far closer in worldview and policy prescriptions than their Republican counterparts.

The recent friendly campaigning in the Clinton-Obama race — after weeks of slugging — prompted speculation in recent days that the two might even end up on the Democratic ticket this fall. They continued to split big-name endorsements from political leaders and movie stars; Robert De Niro joined Obama’s effort this week and Jack Nicholson put out robocalls for Clinton before Tuesday’s votes.

If Tuesday was the beginning of the end of the GOP contests, it may have marked the end of the beginning of a Democratic delegate battle that could be playing out a month from now when voters in Ohio and Texas cast ballots March 4. Clinton’s campaign on Tuesday challenged Obama to candidate debates that would take place in those two delegate-rich states.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the debate offering “a tactic out of a second-year congressional campaign play book” but did not rule it out.

In this year of political intrigue, it remained unclear which of the two could amass the 2,025 delegates needed at the party’s nominating convention in Denver.

The Obama campaign was looking ahead to the so-called Potomac Primary next Tuesday — when Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia cast votes. But Plouffe referred to the potential of still competing in Pennsylvania primary April 22, more than two months away, in describing his campaign’s planning. “We’re preparing for a long, drawn-out affair,” he told reporters in Chicago.