Sen. John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination today as Mitt Romney quit the race. The Associated Press reports:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney will say at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Will the “nutty conservatocracy” now be forced to unify behind McCain? Will you support him?

Good for Laura Ingraham. She’s a Romney supporter who has not gone nuts. Seeing a McCain nomination as likely, she says she’ll support him, given the alternative.

Other members of the conservatocracy are political suicide bombers. Ann Coulter said she would vote for Hillary Clinton over John McCain, and then went even when one step further: “I would vote for the devil over John McCain.” Puh-leaze.

What’s the basis for McCainophobia? McCain-Feingold was wrong. His Gang-of-14 work on judicial nominations was probably wrong, but it had some tactical justification. McCain gets zapped by talk show hosts – and Arizona voters – on immigration, but in an e pluribus unum country his position is defensible.

I wasn’t for McCain in 2000 and he wasn’t my initial choice this year, but he showed a lot of guts – and wisdom – in pushing hard for the Iraq surge when other GOP candidates were making political comments. He has a long conservative record on most issues, as opposed to recent conservative words.

Romney supporters are the most faith-based this year: While McCain year after year during the 1990s was voting conservative, Romney was running as a liberal. Besides, McCain is an honorable man. He doesn’t deserve the invective that Rush Limbaugh and others are dumping on him.

Here’s where being primarily a Christian rather than a conservative is important. “Put not your hope in princes,” so Christians are not to get carried away with enthusiasm for an Obama or a Romney. But we’re also to use the judgment of charity, which means not seeing the worst in a McCain or a Hillary Clinton.

Only one thing is clear in the returns so far: People who expect utopia around the corner will be disappointed. Those who expect disaster around the corner will probably be wrong as well.

The Orlando Sentinel styled today’s Florida primary election a wide-open race that could be decided by white evangelicals, a voter-bloc comprising 25 to 35 percent of likely GOP voters. But evangelicals there aren’t necessarily aligning with Huckabee, the Baptist minister on the ballot. In fact, they seem evenly split among three of the major GOP candidates:

“Each candidate speaks to a different interest of the evangelical perspective, and each is getting a share of the pocketbook and family-values vote,” said Pastor Joel Hunter, author of A New Kind of Conservative…A Mason-Dixon Florida Poll conducted this week showed 27 percent of self-described “born again” voters backed Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who combined a “FairTax” campaign pitch aimed at blue-collar voters with conservative “biblical” values to win a victory in the Iowa caucuses.

But 28 percent favored former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who once made much of his anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage credentials but is now touting himself as a businessman who can fix a “broken” Washington establishment. And 23 percent chose Arizona Sen. John McCain, a maverick conservative and supporter of the Iraq war who in 2000 blasted some evangelical leaders as “agents of intolerance.”

At this point, only Giuliani is already looking like an also-ran, polling just 9 percent. Let’s pretend we’re the Sunshine State. If you were voting today in Florida, which GOP candidate would you vote for and why? Tomorrow, we’ll see if our winner matches the one down south.

Today is M-Day, the Michigan primaries. Word is, it could be Romney’s last chance to stay in the race. Meanwhile, John McCain and Mike Huckabee spent yesterday scouting each other’s voters. The Washington Times reports:

John McCain and Mike Huckabee traded places yesterday, with the war-hawk senator preaching Judeo-Christian values and the ordained Southern Baptist minister talking bullets and bombs at an armored-vehicle plant…Mr. McCain, who won the New Hampshire primary last week and vaulted into the front-runner position for the Republican presidential nomination, has spent the last week trying to lock down independent voters, including evangelicals, who delivered a win to Mr. Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago…

Looking to swipe voters from Mr. McCain, Mr. Huckabee pitched national security and military strength yesterday during a stop in Lansing. With a huge armored truck as a backdrop, he said Michigan has long led the nation with “its capacity to build and manufacture our airplanes and our tanks and our armored vehicles, our bullets and our bombs.”

With presidential primaries based on a combination of voters’ real “druthers” and their perceptions of candidates’ electability in November, which candidate — Huckabee or McCain — has the better shot at swinging the other guy’s voters his way?

A few weeks ago, a National Review columnist noodled with the idea of a McCain/Lieberman ticket. Shortly thereafter, the press discarded McCain as an also-ran. Then he won New Hampshire. Now a new poll shows him up nine points in Michigan. Then today comes this Wall Street Journal op-ed on the success of the surge.

The co-byline? John McCain and Joe Lieberman. In that order.

I seem to recall that McCain and Lieberman have co-written op-eds before. But why this one now, when the success of the surge is already well-worn editorial ground? Could their co-byline be a test balloon?

Lieberman has, of course, already endorsed McCain. With speculation on the possibility of an historic Democratic ticket with a black man and a woman (whether Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama), could there be a behind-the-scenes push for the GOP to nominate an also-historic bipartisan GOP/Independent Democrat ticket with a dose of ethno-religious diversity courtesy of Mr. Lieberman?

Running against a pair of mavericks, both of whom are demonstrated moderates, imagine the consternation of the Democrats heading into the heart of the presidential campaign, their ammo stores empty of “failed war” bullets and religious- and economic-extremism grenades. In fact, the Democratic Party might find itself, for once, having to mount a defense against charges of extremism on everything from abortion to the war.

How do you think such a race would play out? And who would win?