Tuesday, February 05, 2008

West Virgina back room deals

Earlier today I mentioned that in the second string of balloting McCain voters voted against Romney by going for Huckabee and that the real winner was McCain.

Well I was going through some numbers between that post and the news piece I'll link later.

First Ballot
Romney 41
Huckabee 33
McCain 15
Paul 10

Second
Huck 52
Romney 47
McCain 1

14% of McCain went to Huck. Paul's 10% split even to Romney/Huck. It's also possible that ALL of McCain went to Huck and the 1% McCain picked up were Paul people.

I posted over at FreeRepublic:

Something stinks in WV. For second round balloting all the original Huck and Romney voters kept with their candidate.

ALL the McCain voters went to Huck even though their candidate was still in.

Looks like Ron Paul voters went 5, 4, 1 respectively. Paul may have gone 5, 5 and 1% of McCain voters weren’t in on the game.

Either way point being that McCain voters colluded and went 100% to Huck. If McCain’s 15% had gone even 10% Huck and 5% Romney I would believe that was not colluded and self choice, but 14 or 15% (depending on what Ron Paul’s 10 did) is collusion.

The fix was in. McCain could afford to lose WV to Huck but he couldn’t afford to lose it to Romney.

Dirty yes, but legal, and why caucuses suck.

Huck supporters are all cheering and happy right now but I actually feel sorry for Huck because he is gonna get kicked to the curb by McCain when it’s all over and Huck supporters haven’t figured that out.

Well it turns out that I was right. Fox News posted this article sometime after my post and number crunching.

The highlight was:

But before Huckabee’s surprising turnaround in the second round, McCain delegates told FOX News they had been instructed by the campaign to throw their support to Huckabee.

McCain delegate John Vuolo said former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer approached him and other McCain supporters at the convention and told them he had spoken to McCain, and that the best thing to do was to support Huckabee in the hope that Huckabee could beat Romney in this winner-take-all state.

So it looks like my gut reaction and number crunching proved to be correct. McCain sacrificed West Virginia to keep Romney from collecting the 18 delegates.

McCain was the real winner, not Huckabee.

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