Illinois is made for a guy like McCain so he should take it walking away. Huckabee will get some of the Family Taxpayers Network crowd, but that’s not even close to a plurality in the Illinois GOP.

Romney is in the bizarre position of being hated by just about everyone including Porno Pete who is having a jihad against him for not hating gay people enough.

With Giuliani out, almost all of that support went to McCain and what little power is left will pull in a good victory for McCain.

The Illinois GOP is terrified of an Obama candidacy because he’ll wipe the floor with whatever guy is on the Republican side and McCain probably does the best in pulling out the base–which isn’t saying much.

The problem for the GOP is that if Obama is the nonimee, there will be an automatic bump in turnout for Democrats without having to work for it.  On the other hand a depressed Republican state party with no real candidate for US Senate is then stuck trying to defend state legislative seats with no one at the top of the ticket with any drawing power or any desire to even bother with Illinois and at least 3 Congressional races that could flip to Democratic with IL-14, IL-11, and IL-10.  Add to that, reasonably good candidates for Dems in IL-16, IL-6 and IL-18 and that’s a hell of a task for them to try and stem the bleeding. Oh, and an outside chance in IL-19.  The only truly safe seats for Republicans look to be IL-15 and IL-13 in such a situation. While some of the seats I identifiedd are very unlikely to flip other than the first three, those others will need resources–resources the national Republican Party doesn’t have nor does the Illinois State Republican Party.