The Trend is Real: Conservatives Rally

UPDATE: Dan Riehl, Riehl World View:

McCain's Straight Talk Not Nearly So Straight

I think died in the wool conservatives are not just upset with McCain for his liberal positions. It bothers them that a fawning media gives him such a pass. Hell, he's the biggest flip-flopper in the race right now. And not a single journalist he schmoozes on his campaign bus takes him to task.

UPDATE: Romney Campaigns Through the Night. AP:

Don't say Mitt Romney won't go the extra mile for a vote.

The Republican presidential contender was logging more than 5,000 of them as he undertook a 37-hour, coast-to-coast-to-coast dash while trying to better rival John McCain in the 21 Super Tuesday nominating contests.

After flitting from Nashville, Tenn., to Atlanta to Oklahoma City to Long Beach, Calif., on Monday, Romney was turning around and flying a red-eye to Charleston, W.Va., in time to address the GOP state convention Tuesday morning.

Romney hoped not only to win there, but also in California's pivotal primary.

"I think it communicates to people in California that the entire nation is watching California and what they're going to do," he said in Tennessee after setting off on his journey at 7 a.m. EST Monday. "If I win California, that means you're going to have a conservative in the White House."

***
Erick at RedState:

By the way, I'm thinking Romney wins California tomorrow and I suspect he'll win more states, if not more delegates, than McCain. I don't think McCain's team has reacted with serious aggression to the trend of conservatives rallying to Romney.

The trend is real -- conservatives are rallying to him.

Open thread here. And Reid Wilson, Politics Nation:

For at least one candidate, though, California will not be the story. John McCain, once an afterthought, then the front-runner, is seeing his poll numbers in the Golden State sink again. After enjoying leads as high as 19 points, just days after his New Hampshire win, and 13 points, in a CNN/Politico/LA Times poll last week, McCain now owns just a 2-point lead in the latest RCP California Average.

The news may be worse than that. A tracking poll for C-SPAN and Reuters, taken by Zogby, shows distinct movement toward McCain's chief opponent in California, Mitt Romney. After taking the lead yesterday, Romney is now up by eight points.

Wilson says McCain's team is already downplaying expectations. What are all those reporters going to do out there? How will they report a Romney win? Will they say it was just a fluke?

McCain-Romney tied in Georgia. RCP. Great new Mitt ad up per Hot Air. Hillary=McCain

I just got back from my women's Republican group, some of whom were Thompson and Giuliani supporters and they are all determined to vote for Mitt tomorrow and stop the MSM railroading us onto the McCain train.

UPDATE: California readers--there's a rally in Long Beach tonight (7:50 pm Sky Harbor airport) with Governor Romney!!

UPDATE: Byron York, NRO (not a Romney guy per se):

Phoenix, Ariz. — Since John McCain’s win in Florida, the conventional wisdom has been that he has nearly locked up the Republican presidential nomination. But now, just hours before Super Tuesday voting begins, a new factor has entered the equation: California. Polls, both public and those taken privately by the Romney campaign, show Mitt Romney with unexpected strength in the nation’s biggest state, sending both Romney and McCain rushing to make unscheduled stops there on Monday night and Tuesday. If Romney could win California, people in both campaigns say, the race could go on for several more weeks. And if that happens, conservatives who are trying to organize to stop McCain would have more time to work. At this late moment, California means everything.

A Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll, finished Sunday, shows Romney leading McCain in California, 40 percent to 32 percent. A Rasmussen poll, finished Saturday, shows the two candidates tied at 38 percent. Other polls, taken before February first, showed McCain in the lead, sometimes by a substantial margin.

“Our internals show it about the same as the public polls,” one Romney adviser tells me. “There clearly has been a movement.” A McCain insider says, “We don’t have our own polling, but in the polling we’ve heard about, we started to see a trend toward Romney on Saturday.”

The debate was key. And voters getting to know Mitt. He wears well.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt:

California is among the most wired of states, with a Republican base used to communicating around the dominant MSM represented by the Los Angeles Times. The big shift to Romney coincides with Arnold's and Los Angeles Times' endorsement of McCain and underscores just how weary the Golden State GOP is of accommodation to political elites. Arnold was elected as an insurgent on a recall but has not governed as an opponent of Sacramento. Republicans genuinely like Arnold just as they genuinely admire McCain's heroism.

But this election is about much more than affection or admiration for candidates. It is about the ideas behind their desire to lead, and Romney's ideas are Reagan's. Romney came to some of those convictions later than long-serving Republicans in the party and beyond, but he's where they want him to be, and he's not going to abandon these ideas upon entering office.

We're using every weapon in our conservative arsenal to fight for Mitt. And for America.

UPDATE: My federalist friends at Conservative Springfield (Illinois) endorse Mitt: "An Unvarnished State of the Union and Where America Went Wrong"

UPDATE: Mick Stockinger, Uncorrelated on McCain, Romney and the surge:

Secondly, Romney's cautious support reflects wisdom learned from long experience. A bigger hammer may be required, but a wise mechanic may opt for WD-40 and thus avoid stripping the bolt. Romney did not have the benefit of secret briefings by the Pentagon, nor had he actually been to Iraq at that point. A bold pronouncement of "hell yes!" would be thankfully, uncharacteristic of Romney, or his presidency.

Yes, it would have been irresponsible when he didn't have all the info--but as we know as president he would go after the facts, because he is an in-depth, independent thinker and a decisive manager. Also this great post on electability.

UPDATE: An Olympian duel. LA Times:

On Sept. 19, 2000, John McCain rose in the Senate to rail against what
he called the "staggering" sums that the federal government planned to
spend to help Salt Lake City stage the 2002 Winter Olympics.

"The American taxpayer is being shaken down to the tune of nearly a
billion and a half dollars," McCain said.

The Arizona Republican vowed to "do everything in my power" to delay
or kill "this pork-barrel spending" and to end the "fiscal abuse"
related to the Olympics. "This is preposterous and it must stop," he
said.

Mitt Romney, who headed the Olympics, counseled calm when reporters
from Utah's Deseret Morning News reached him in Sydney, Australia.
Romney challenged McCain's arithmetic, arguing that taxpayers would
provide only $250 million. In any case, he asserted that he already
had obtained backing in Congress.

"I'm expecting the funding we need to host the Games," he said. "I'm
quite confident."

The clash over Olympics spending, which dragged on for two years,
helps explain some of the acrimony that now characterizes the race
between the two front-runners for the Republican presidential
nomination. The dispute provided an early preview of the fissures that
still divide McCain and Romney as they face what may be decisive
contests Tuesday.

And the games went on with heightened security, but successfully, providing a much needed lift to the nation 3 months after Sept. 11th. See it again.

UPDATE: The Trail:

The problem for those anxiously awaiting the outcome of Super Tuesday's biggest prize is that the ballots can be turned in right up to the time California polls close Tuesday night. As a result, Weil estimates that more than 1 million votes -- perhaps far more than that -- won't be counted election night.

That could be crucial in what appear to be tightening presidential races on both the Democratic and Republican side.
Those votes that came in prior to the weekend will be the first counted, Weir said. Election officials are allowed to start opening the ballots seven days before the election, and the counting will begin as soon as the polls close. But less than half the absentees had been returned by then.

UPDATE: Jonathan Martin, the Politico:

Romney responds to McCain's Boston trip with tweak of his own

The email headline: "Half of the proposed McCain-Kerry '04 ticket campaigns in MA!"

The boffo art:

UPDATE: Rudy still has his this up on his campaign site:

Just the Facts #1: MCCAIN HAS VOTED FOR HIGHER TAXES MORE THAN 50 TIMES

California Pix from Long Beach rally.

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