Raising McCain

For months now, John McCain has been written off. Bloggers across the political spectrum, and a few on this very site, have offered their obituaries on the Arizona senator, pointing to McCain's support of President Bush's ill-fated immigration fix as the proverbial nail in his presidential coffin.

Since the summer, we've witnessed an epic battle for the conservative soul. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have gone to blows over who is the better choice for evangelical Christians. A scandal-plagued Rudy Giuliani has watched his numbers plummet along with temperatures across the Midwest and Northeast. Fred Thompson might take advantage of these developments, but he simply doesn't appear to have it in him. The result is that no clear front-runner has galloped forth.

Through it all, John McCain has refused to settle in for a long winter's nap. Suddenly, he's racking up the endorsements. And a new poll shows him in a with Romney for independent-voter heavy New Hampshire.

While McCain is still seen as having egg on his face regarding his misreading of voter ire over the immigration issue, he raises a forceful argument that he was right all along when it comes to the necessity to follow through with the Iraq troop surge. Both subjects could still backfire on McCain. Violence in Iraq remains variable, and while he has said he was sorry over the question of the immigration bill, it's unclear just how McCain would move forward to solve the problem.

One get the sense that the more voters see of the rest of the Republican field, the more McCain's centrist platform seems worth revisiting.