First, here are the results:McCain: AZ, CT, DE, IL, OK, NJ, NY, MO, CARomney: AZ, MA, MN, ND, UT, MT, COHuckabee: AL, AR, GA, WV, TNSo what did we learn? Well:1. Never, ever again say Huckabee is out of the race. I thought he would be out after Super Tuesday and that shows how much I know :-)2. McCain shouldn’t have said this race would be decided on Super Tuesday because now his good night looks worse than it was (but not by the press).3. Romney is going to wish he hadn’t said that it was a two man race, it leaves him open to snappy-Huckabee comebacks like this:4. The pundits cannot predict what the voter is going to do, so why are we still listening to them? They thought McCain would run away with this but he hasn’t and though he’s ahead in the delegate count coming out of today, he certainly didn’t get enough to win. 5. The south is ready for a black president but not a Mormon president. If by some miracle Romney wins this race, I don’t think his prospects are good for the fall. He will probably not get a majority of the votes in the south.6. The prospect of a McCain presidency has made me a little more open to a Huckabee presidency but I would be shocked if he won (though, as I said in number 1 never count Huckabee out, the Christians refuse to let his candidacy die no matter how dead it looks 🙂 7. Turn out has been much greater for the Democrats than for the Republicans. I don’t think we’re that happy with our choice. None of these candidates are fully conservative and each appeal only to a segment of the base. None of them will be able to make the party coalesce around them in the fall. If the base does coalesce, it will be for other reasons (to beat Hillary, the war, etc.), not because we want any of these guys as our president.8. McCain is so disliked by the base that he can’t even get a majority of the vote in any state except the bluest of the blue states which he will not win in the fall (despite what he said yesterday). Heck! He can’t even get a majority in his home state!9. If conservatives sit out this race (as Dobson is threatening to do) and allow Clinton or Obama to win, we will throw away all that Bush has accomplished on the courts and set the pro-life movement back many years.But the most important thing we continue to re-learn each election cycle is that all of the candidates are flawed and will not be able to save this nation. There is no such thing as a political savior who will lead us into utopia. As David Kuo notes:

Politically it is important because if our expectations of the next president are too great we will only experience crushing disappointment and that man or woman will only be tossed out of office a failed president. We have to temper our expectations.Spiritually it is important because we cannot fall into the tempter’s trap of believing politics is the answer and that if we simply do politics better or with more passion we can save the world. Politics can’t save the world. God can.So, on this sort-of-important Tuesday let’s take a deep breath and enjoy the day for what it is and warn against what it is not.

Updated: Two more things I thought of as I was driving my daughters to school this morning:10. If McCain wants to reach out to conservatives he needs to pick a social and fiscal conservative governor (Huckabee would only bring the social conservatives not the fiscal or anti-illegal immigration conservatives). I suspect that McCain thinks that he doesn’t need conservatives and that he will do well among moderates and liberals. That could be true against Clinton (though, I seriously doubt it) but it’s not against Obama.11. If conservatives decide to sit this one out, then they need to vote in the down ticket races. If Obama or Clinton win this election, we cannot afford for the Democrats to have a super majority in the Senate. We need to be able to filibuster Hillarycare and all the other socialism that she intends to ram down our throats. No use punishing our kids because we couldn’t nominate a descent presidential candidate that would energize the base. Plus it would sound an even bigger objection to McCain if he lost a state but the Senator and the House members won. It would let the MSM, Democrats, and McCain know that the conservatives had the power to elect but chose not to use it. Anyone who decides not to contribute to McCain should think about contributing to the campaigns of Senators in close races and to McConnell. We are going to need him over the next 4 years more than ever.Updated to add delegate counts:According to CNN: Clinton 783 Obama 709Edwards 26McCain 559 Romney 265 Huckabee 169Paul 16What a mess!Updated yet again to add Hewitt’s delegate count:

As of this morning, McCain has earned 615 delegates and 4,220,296 votes; Romney 268 delegates and 3,497,341 votes, and Huckabee 169 delegates and 2,232,530 votes.