At TownHall, Patrick Ruffini writes about Sen. John McCain’s appeal to the new swing voter bloc of older belligerent men, with just enough seriousness to suggest he might figure out McCain’s real appeal — though he will be kicking himself he finds out that Cindy McCain also has an enemies list and believes: “The only person my husband can trust is me.”  But that’s really the appetizer.

Ruffini goes on to dispute co-blogger Hugh Hewitt’s theory that the current struggle against McCain is like the efforts conservatives made against Harriet Miers and the 2007 McCain-Kennedy bill.  Ruffini notes that those were fights where conservatives  could push back against elite decision-makers, whereas the nomination campaign involves informing 15-20 ordinary voters.  Ruffini probably has the better of that argument, but if he ever figures out McCain’s voter base, he might understand how Herculean the task of weaning them away from McCain really would be.

At OpenLeft, Chris Bowers is rooting for Romney because he believes him to be easier to beat, but he is fairly objective in laying out the case for a Romney trench warfare scenario beyond Super-Duper Tuesday.  He also notes from his commenter IVR Polls that the difference in screening lively likely voters is causing a huge gap between Gallup and Rasmussen; FWIW, IVR Polls actually sides with Rasmussen.