If the GOP Unites Behind McCain or Giuliani, It's Over

So says John McIntyre of RealClearPolitics.com in an interview conducted with Lowell Brown and John Schroeder (both SCBA buddies of mine) at Article6Blog. McIntyre is a pretty astute observer of the political scene, and his website is mandatory daily reading. They've also been linking to a number of my posts lately for which I, of course, am grateful.

Here's what McIntyre had to say regarding '08 and the possible candidacies of Mitt Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani:

Brown:
It seems like the issues would be the polarizing factors, because McCain and Giuliani by personality seem to be the more iconoclastic, polarizing type of individuals; Romney is not, but it is probably the positions that Romney would take, not Romney himself, that would polarize.

McIntyre:
What leads me to say that, and again I preface this by saying a united Republican Party, because I think you have a small possibility in a McCain or Giuliani nomination, if they’re the nominees, that you could get a divided Republican Party, that’s a whole different can of worms. But a united Republican Party behind either McCain or Giuliani, I think wins the general election, easy. And I think that tones down the whole level of partisanship because the press realizes right away that the Democrats just aren’t going to win. I mean with the McCain and Giuliani, depending on who they pick as their nominee, suddenly Democratic states are in play. The whole battlefield has changed. Traditional states that the Democrats have to have as their core to get close to 270 electoral votes, McCain and Giuliani can compete in some of those states. McCain could win California. I mean, it’s almost inconceivable to think of how the Democrats can win the Presidency that way in California. I mean, McCain as the nominee has a really good chance of securing the state of California. And so I think the press at some point just says, you know this guy is going to win 55% of the vote, why are we going to turn this into a bloodfest when everybody knows what’s going to happen? I think a Romney/Clinton race is another one of these 50/50 type of deals, and it will be ugly.

The key word in this whole exchange is "united". Can the GOP possible united behind McCain, Giuliani, or Romney for that matter. At this point I would doubt it, but two years in the political wilderness may have a way of focusing the mind.

I do think that McCain (as much as I dislike him) or Giuliani (I like him a lot) could put some blue states in play in ways Romney never could. I think the Mormon thing is going to be bigger than Romney supporters would want to acknowledge, and even when matched up against Hillary, who reminds everybody of their first three ex-wives all rolled into one, you still have to give Hillary the nod in any blue or even purple state.

However, there's a long way to go and plenty of things that can still happen to change the dynamic of the race. Blogger buddy Mark Daniels thinks that Hillary will be the next one to bail out of the race and that Evan Bayh may be the next logical choice for the nomination (see Mark's comment on this post). I'm not sure about that. I can't see Hillary getting out before the voting starts in the primaries. I do think it's possible she could have a "Howard Dean" moment and lose a key primary for which she was thought a shoe-in. I don't know if she'll give us a scream as Howard did, but something like that could quickly turn the primary voters against her if they see her as damaged goods.

It's all going to be very fascinating.

UPDATE: Rudy's in the race.