Across the pond

Mitt Romney had to win in Michigan, where his father is a former Governor, to stay in the race. He not only won but won convincingly. He took 39 per cent in the Republican contest, with John McCain winning only 30 per cent and Mike Huckabee trailing with 15 per cent.

So the current state of play is that each of these three has won an emphatic victory in one of the the three states already declared. Huckabee in Iowa, McCain in New Hampshire and now Romney in Michigan the biggest state of the three including some very big cities.

The race is clearly wide open. One interesting footnote. McCain did much less well than expected amongst independent voters without a Republican party card. Which prompts me to assert that my blog yesterday on Michael Bloomberg was worth doing. The Republican waters will be muddied still further if ex-Mayor of New York, Rudy Guliani, does well in Florida.

If there is still no clear Republican winner by early March it is entirely possible that the present mayor of New York will throw his hat in the ring and back it with a spend which could break all the records in the history books. The precedents are no help in judging whether this is possible but no previous candidate  is anything like as rich as Bloomberg. The richest I can remember is Nelson Rockefeller. But his fortune was measured in millions, not billions, and most of it he inherited it from his father.

Bloomberg is a self-made man. And his record in New York indicates that he is capable of making the transition from business to politics and government. Definitely too soon to write him off.