Without much excitement, the Republican party appears ready to hand John McCain a smashing victory today when 21 states hold primaries and caucuses.Mitt Romney is making a late play for California, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama but it may be way too little and too late. McCain is ahead in 8 of the 9 "Winner take all" primaries and is comfortably ahead in 6 other states.In addition to the states mentioned above where Romney is competitive, he is closing in Missouri and may do better in the Minnesota caucuses than the polls are predicting. Otherwise, Romney is ahead in Massachusetts, Utah, Colorado, and it is believed he is doing well in Montana although that state's caucuses are for naming a "preference" candidate only.None of the national polls are detecting a surge toward Romney (although curiously, the usually reliable Rasmussen has the Romney-McCain race considerably closer than every other poll released in the last week). McCain's predicted...(Read Full Post)