Monday, February 04, 2008

For Romney and the Stop-McCain Movement, California Is Everything   [Byron York]

I have a new article up about how California has emerged as the last-minute crucial battleground for Mitt Romney. Polls show Romney advancing there in the past couple of days, and both he and McCain have changed their schedules to make campaign stops in the state. Romney is flying there now, will hold an airport rally in Long Beach, and will then turn around and fly back east to be at an event in West Virginia tomorrow morning. McCain will go there tomorrow before heading home to Arizona for election night.

The reason for all the scrambling is this. If Romney were to win California, he and his supporters would surely interpret it as a sign that the conservative movement is finally – at the "11th hour and the 59th minute" as one Romney adviser told me – organizing to stop McCain. If Romney, on the basis of a good showing in California, stays in the race, then the anti-McCain movement, led by talk radio and conservative activists, will have more time to work. But even a good showing by Romney in California might just be the result of a last-minute multi-million dollar ad buy, and there is the chance that, if he loses other big contests Tuesday, Romney might decide that it makes no sense to go on. That's his decision to make. But for the anti-McCain forces, California is everything.

02/04 04:30 PMShare