I’m still keyed up from a marathon three hour BBC appearance and am still sorting some things out but…

–What’s Huckabee’s logic staying in the race? Clearly his support is overwhelmingly regional to the south, and I just can’t see a significant percentage of folks viewing him as a conservative alternative to McCain. The only thing I can think of is that he’s hoping to take a big chunk of Texas and accumulate enough delegates that he can force his way on to the ticket under the very unlikely scenario that the convention is brokered.

–Romney is a dead politician walking. I can’t think of a single thing that he needed to have happen tonight that broke his way. Everyone keeps talking about how lucky McCain has been throughout this process to be in the position he’s in. The corollary to that is that for every bit of luck McCain’s had, Romney’s been unlucky.

–Then again, maybe the McCain campaign makes its own luck. The way that they swung the West Virginia convention to Huckabee after it looked like Romney would win it — all of that backroom maneuvering had to happen pretty fast. That they made Romney snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is evidence of a pretty finely honed campaign that knows what it’s doing on the ground. That first surprising loss set the tone for Romney for the whole rest of the day.

–The fact that McCain has emerged as a frontrunner relatively early on while the Democratic race is incredibly tight is the exact opposite of what was expected not too long ago. This is a big opportunity for the GOP if — and that’s a big if — the base can quickly unite behind McCain and start running a general election campaign while the Democrats duke it out against each other for potentially months to come.

–I was going to write something about this before, but I see Captain Ed beat me to it. The Democratic race is incredibly close and the Democrats’ emphasis of proportional delegates suggests it might stay close to the bitter end. If the nomination breaks for Hillary on the basis of superdelegates it could be a DISASTER for the the Democratic party and severely alienate the black vote. GOP strategists should start thinking up strategies now to reach out and court the black vote if that happens.