Also of note, Huckabee supporters break more to McCain than Romney by a huge margin. (h/t Marc Ambinder, from Pew)

PS – “Convince Me Of The Merits Of Mitt”

I’ve been reading Instapundit tonight.

It was a good year, New England, but the Giants just wanted it more.
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Chris Green (aka STD) wondered why I support John McCain and why I chose now to express it.  It’s a good question and one I answered back in the comments, but I figure I should share it here as well for anyone else who might find themselves scratching their heads:

I had avoided making a full endorsement of anyone because not only was the field too large but my time to actually look into the candidates was limited. Initially I was a Thompson guy, but he looked better when thinking about running than he did once he was in. I have for months considered McCain the candidate to watch. Despite the troubles in his campaign he still held steady in numbers and kept his name around.

Looking at the field, what do you have? Huckabee’s more or less Jimmy Carter, only with less foreign policy experience. Ron Paul is utterly unelectable and out of left field. Romney’s ability to mold his politics to public opinion is amazing.

Immigration is a non-issue for me. Seriously, I don’t care, and I’ll articulate why in the near future. McCain/Feingold was a band-aid to a broken system to which any solution was not going to be taken well. And I don’t see McCain about to push for any restrictions on the Second Amendment, [NRA] C+ rating or no.

John McCain’s foreign policy experience and stand in the War on Terror is stronger than anyone else in the field. His support for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent goes a long way to putting him in solid conservative financial footing. His overall experience trumps anyone else in the field and he has what it takes to not only win the party nomination but take the White House in November.

More later…