John McCain hosted a barbecue last weekend and invited several potential running mates, signaling the opening of vice presidential candidate speculation season. Joining the presumptive Republican nominee at his Arizona home were Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.* All would be acceptable choices to a struggling GOP, but who will best help unite Republicans around the McCain campaign?

Like Democrats, Republicans are fractured this election season. The party that can quickly unite to claim moderate and undecided voters will boost its chances of winning in November.

McCain’s biggest weak points are his age, his economic policy, and his weakness with religious voters. Christian conservatives do not have an easily identifiable candidate this election season. Though McCain stands for many evangelical values, he does not trumpet his faith as Bush did in 2000 and Huckabee did earlier this year.

Bobby Jindal could provide McCain with the support he needs in the Christian community. Though Catholic, Jindal has appeal amongst evangelicals for his pro-family positions, including a hard line against all abortion. Mitt Romney received a mixed reception from evangelicals during the GOP primary, and could prove a liability for McCain on matters of faith.

However, Romney would bring McCain much needed business experience for his economic policy, and would give the GOP a clear heir apparent for 2012. Romney might also be able to bring in Michigan, providing much needed electoral votes, or at the very least force Romney is spend resources there.

Charlie Crist has been a popular first term governor and is widely rumored to be amongst McCain’s favorites. But a Florida news poll last week showed he might not bring as many Florida votes in the general election as first thought. Additionally, John Miller trashed Crist in a National Review article last month, pointing out the Florida governor’s pro-liberal past.

Another potential candidate is Mike Huckabee, though the politician-turned-comedian would not bring much to the ticket that Jindal or Crist couldn’t offer. Governors Mark Sanford (R-SC) and Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), along with Secretary of State Condelleza Rice have also been mentioned as likely candidates.

*CORRECTION: Mike Huckabee was invited to the gathering but didn’t attend, choosing an anniversary trip with his wife instead.

Is Barack Obama too hip for his own good? John Dickerson wonders if Obamaniacs will stay faithful: “Isn’t the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled?” Slate also publishes a letter from a cynical, hip ex-Obamaniac who’s dumping Obama for being too cool.

Doug Kmiec thinks Catholics will buy into Obama-as-Messiah hysteria, too. Crunchy Con and National Review’s The Corner scoff at the idea.

After a depressing couple of weeks, Hillary Clinton scrambles to hold her supporters together, contrasting “speeches” with “solutions,” and “Yes, we can!” with “Yes, we will!” Some Democrats still consider dumping her and switching their allegiance to Obama, while other Democrats vow to stay neutral. Peggy Noonan suggests honesty as a campaign strategy: “When everyone in America knows you’re in a dreadful position, admit you’re in a dreadful position.” Clinton is leading in Ohio polls and may have a victory to anticipate in Texas, depending on which poll you read.

Good news for John McCain: He gets endorsements from George Bush, Sr., and Mitt Romney. Bad news: The candidate trumpeting campaign finance reform could use some campaign cash. McCain is adopting some unorthodox fundraising techniques and challenging Obama, who’s currently rolling in dough, to keep his promise to run a publicly-financed general election campaign.

In the New York Times, Gail Collins says McCain is caving on issues like economic recovery and torture. His campaign dismisses allegations that his vote against an anti-torture bill is inconsistent with his anti-torture statements.

Mike Huckabee’s quixotic campaign finally gains some media attention —- for his paid speech in the Cayman Islands and for an IRS investigation of a pastoral endorsement.

John McCain may not have the support of Lincoln Chafee, but he now has the endorsement of former GOP candidate Mitt Romney, who will encourage his delegates to back the Arizona senator. Could this foreshadow a McCain-Romney ticket?

Former Mitt Romney supporter Paul Weyrich has endorsed Mike Huckabee, while Jeb Bush and Gary Bauer have publicly announced that they are backing John McCain.

After Gov. Mitt Romney’s negligible showing in the Super Tuesday primaries, the morning blogosphere echoed with a resounding death knell for his candidacy. Huckabee supporters gloated at the fresh reminder that their man is actually the second-runner, and even some Romney supporters reluctantly began reluctantly accepting McCain.

My friend Chad Matlin has one of the best summaries of why last night was such a blow to Romney:

Romney’s last hope was to remain relevant in California, but that worked about as well as his two-dozen different campaign messages. The next few contests—Kansas, Louisiana, Washington, Virginia, and Maryland—don’t really favor him, but that’s because the country doesn’t favor him. The only region where Romney did especially well was in the mountain west, where Mormons live and news stories go to die.

Conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt notes “Senator McCain’s lead” and urges fellow Romney supporters to rally around “the GOP nominee” (whose name he is apparently reluctant to say). And Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House employed dialogue from the famous Monty Python dead-parrot skit to describe Romney: “E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!”

But perhaps the most interesting observation was made by Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost. He contends that there is a sharp disparity between “pundit-based reality” and “voter-based reality,” which means the media has been telling us a fairy-tale story about Huckabee and Romney. (Wouldn’t that be a shocker?) The official yarn has been that if Huckabee would just move out of the way, Romney would have less trouble shoring up the conservative vote. Carter thinks it’s the opposite: Huckabee is actually competing with McCain for evangelical and conservative support, while Romney is the one desperately siphoning votes.

The fact that Super Tuesday voters clearly didn’t see Romney as a true conservative—he didn’t even place second in the most conservative states—seems to lend support to Carter’s theory. As does common sense: the mainstream media has been so unable to accept Huckabee as a serious candidate, that they simply decided Romney was the only real choice for “hardcore conservatives.” The campaign narrative has followed that invented arc, rather irrationally assuming that Huckabee would slowly die out as electability became an increasingly important factor. If Christians have been discouraged from supporting Huckabee, it probably has more to do with being constantly told he’s unelectable than a sincere belief that Mitt Romney is the one true conservative. Thus, it’s not really a surprise to see Huckabee claiming his natural demographic as Romney — reckless purchasing power and endorsements aside — remained unable to win much of anything.

Super Tuesday proved a lot of pundits wrong about a lot of things. They knew Huckabee did not have a chance of becoming the nominee (which he never did), but their assumptive exaggerations of Romney’s viability have probably kept his campaign alive past its natural expiration.

Polls are closing across the nation in the 24 states holding presidential primaries or caucuses today. By the end of tonight, will we know who the nominee will be for the Democrats and the Republicans?

Here are the final results so far (to be updated throughout the evening):

Democrats

• Hillary Clinton (Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, California)
• Barack Obama (Georgia, Illinois, Delaware, Alabama, Kansas, Utah, North Dakota, Connecticut, Minnesota, Colorado, Idaho, Alaska, Missouri)

Republicans

• Mike Huckabee (West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia)
• John McCain (New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri, California)
• Mitt Romney (Massachusetts, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Colorado, Alaska)
• Ron Paul (none) [for Wiglaf ]

And here’s an interactive map to help you follow the breakdown of the vote and the delegate count.

UPDATE (10:15 p.m.): The highlights so far include Clinton taking the major northeast states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts — the state where Obama was endorsed by both of its U.S. senators and by its governor; Huckabee winning and leading in what’s looking like a solid South for him; and Romney, so far, winning in only his home state of Massachusetts and in the Mormon-dominated state of Utah.

UPDATE (10:45 p.m.): With McCain finally being called the winner in Arizona, all five major candidates have won their home states.

UPDATE (12:15 a.m.): Clinton and McCain take California.

With Super Tuesday approaching and Mike Huckabee’s campaign fading, pundits are starting to wonder who will capture Huckabee’s ardent evangelical base: John McCain or Mitt Romney?

A Pew Forum poll, conducted before Romney won Michigan, hints that McCain may have an edge. McCain garnered 25% of the national conservative evangelical vote, while Romney drew only 12%. Evangelicals may not love McCain, but do they like him better than Mitt Romney?

Both candidates face challenges. Romney is Mormon – a difficulty for many evangelical voters – and only recently pro-life. McCain has irked evangelical voters with issues like campaign finance reform and his remark that leaders of the Religious Right are “agents of intolerance.”

McCain has since mended fences, telling Jerry Falwell he spoke in haste. Romney worked to woo evangelicals with his speech on religion in America. His efforts paid off in Michigan, where he beat both Huckabee and McCain for the evangelical vote; but McCain’s evangelical support has also grown since Iowa. In South Carolina, where evangelicals accounted for 60% of the voters, Huckabee pulled 43% of the evangelical vote, McCain got 27%, Fred Thompson got 15%, and Mitt Romney got 11%.

This was before Thompson dropped out. Will his voters go to Romney or McCain? John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum, guesses Thompson voters may defect to Huckabee or Romney since voters see McCain as less conservative. In the first race since Thompson dropped out, Huckabee, Romney, and McCain almost evenly split the evangelical vote. Romney tied with Huckabee for 30% of the evangelical votes in Florida, barely beating McCain’s 28%.

Analysts say it’s difficult to predict since the evangelical base is neither as homogeneous nor as family-values- driven as people assume. A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll indicates that evangelical voters are more concerned about federal spending and terrorism than abortion and gay rights. Lester Feder writes that evangelicals are divided when it comes to issues like campaign finance reform and immigration. Green said Huckabee supporters tend to be more moderate on economics and foreign policy.

James Dobson’s influence paradoxically increased last week, thanks to hand wringing over its decline in the 2008 presidential race. A Time piece chronicled the rise and fall of the Dobson empire and buzz began over (more than the content of) this series of “Candidate Commentary” videos posted to CitizenLink.org. The videos give Focus on the Family Action’s 4-1-1 on every candidate.

Dobson has yet to endorse anyone, and FotF maintains its neutrality even after the blogosphere hubbub attending the videos’ release. Yet as Michael Scherer, who contributed reporting to the Time piece, pointed out on Time’s Swampland blog, the shots at Mike Huckabee (unable to “reach out to the fiscal conservatives and the security conservatives”), Rudy Giuliani (dinged for dressing in drag for a Saturday Night Live skit, and who seems poised to drop out and endorse John McCain today anyway) and McCain (not “someone to depend on when you are in a fight”), and fairly glowing praise of Mitt Romney as “solidly conservative” seem to add up to a “stealth” endorsement.

All this is largely uneventful fodder for back-and-forth punditry. But there’s an aspect that hasn’t received much play and may reflect the diminished importance of Focus on the Family and of the media’s go-to shepherd of the Religious Right flock. Schere reported it but possibly failed to realize its significance of. Tom Finnery, a FotF policy expert, says during the Romney video, “Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith, but on the social issues we are so similar.” GetReligion’s Terry Mattingly captures the collective sentiment: “Mitt Romney said WHAT?!?!?”

That statement, if it is true, would have gone a long way in the post-“Faith in America” speech debate toward clarifying Romney’s caginess on whether he thought Mormonism was or wasn’t Christian. Asked for some context, Minnery said it was his interpretation of the faith speech and that “he spoke with the campaign after the video was posted this week and they did not contest his view or ask him to retract the statement,” according to The Denver Post.

Mattingly asks: “Are the Dobson folks grasping at straws as they prepare their flock for an endorsement?”

Hillary Clinton won big over Barack Obama (but gaining no delegates … for now) in Florida’s Democratic primary, while John McCain edged out Mitt Romney for all of the Sunshine State’s GOP delegates, pushing him into the overall lead. Rumor has it that Rudy Giuliani, who finished a distant third in Florida, will drop out and endorse McCain tomorrow. On to Super Tuesday!