Gov. Tim Pawlenty spent the weekend schmoozing with other Republican politicos at the Arizona home of Sen. John McCain, once again fueling speculation about his political future.

The name of Pawlenty, one of the national co-chairs of McCain’s presidential campaign, has persistently popped up on short lists of potential vice-presidential running mates for the Arizona senator.

McCain and Pawlenty have consistently dismissed speculation about Pawlenty’s future role, saying they’ve never discussed it.

The presence of Pawlenty at McCain’s vacation home outside Sedona was noted Monday in several political blogs, which had been buzzing about the weekend off the campaign trail.

Among the other GOP officials who stopped over the weekend were longtime McCain ally Sen. Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina, and South Dakota Sen. John Thune (who’s also ended up on some vice-presidential lists).

The weekend was billed as a chance for McCain to kick back before the primaries Tuesday that are expected to clinch the Republican nomination for him. Characteristically, he also served up barbecue for the traveling press corps he used to jokingly refer to as his “base.”

Here are a few of the blog accounts of the get-together in the desert.

From The Swamp.

Politico’s take. (scroll down)

And Fox News…

Well, that didn’t take long.

Just a few days after the most recent round of Pawlenty-could-be-McCain’s-veep, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza used the National Governor’s Association meeting to have a videotaped sit-down with four governors whose names are being bandied about as possible vice-presidential material.

One was our very own Tim Pawlenty. Of the guv, Cillizza writes, “Pawlenty — widely seen as the current leader in the McCain veepstakes — detailed his long relationship with the senator (the two have known each other for nearly two decades) and his loyalty during the darkest days of McCain’s campaign. But he offered little insight into his own prospects.”

Here’s the video:

For the entire blog post, you can go here.

The Beltway chorus of guessing who John McCain will pick as his running mate keeps swelling and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s name keeps being sung at the top of the insiders’ lungs.

Most recently, the National Journal privately polled what it calls its “GOP power players” on who McCain would end up picking. Pawlenty led the pack, named by 15 percent of the 87 Republican bigwigs. Running second, with 11 percent, was former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. They mentioned no fewer than 18 other possible VP picks.

Among the assessments of Pawlenty are the following:

“Pawlenty brings it all—regional balance, youth, looks, plus a policy
background that can appeal to the center. He’s also doing great
work on energy and environment issues, which would be a nice turf
poach for the GOP.”

“Solid conservative, anti-tax increases, good family, and keeps the

Midwest in play for McCain.”

“It needs to be a governor who can help carry a state and help deal
with the age argument. The two lead candidates would be Crist and
Pawlenty. Crist has a Quayle-like ‘deer in the headlights’ quality about
him if he has to answer an unrehearsed question, leaving Pawlenty.”

That poll, published Friday, came a few hours after the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza’s politics blog ran its new line of what he calls the Veepstakes. His assessment of Pawlenty:

“The two-term Minnesota governor has to be considered the frontrunner at the moment to be McCain’s pick. He hails from the electorally important Midwest, is young enough to balance concerns about McCain’s age, and he stuck by the Arizona senator in the darkest days of the campaign. The criticism that Pawlenty is an unknown on the national stage may, in fact, be an argument in his favor — voters won’t bring any preconceived notions about him to the ticket. Never forget that one of the guiding principles in picking a VP is to find someone who is comfortable being seen but not heard.”

Icing on the speculation cake first came this week from the Politico, where Pawlenty was subject of an exceptionally flattering profile. As befits his continuing, studied, silence on the topic, Pawlenty declined to be interviewed for the piece.

Stay tuned. The talk is likely to only intensify.

It’s hardly news in the world of politics that one-time rivals often become best friends forever once one of them beats the other one. Case in point: Rudy Giuliani’s fervet embrace of John McCain once Rudy’s Florida firewall strategy imploded and McCain was on his way to becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Giuliani even hopped on the Straight Talk Express for some face-to-face schmoozing with the

traveling press. At one point, according to a story in the current issue of The New Yorker, Giuliani made the following case for McCain:

“When I endorsed John, I pointed out that, as far as I can see, he’s the only candidate we have that can put virtually fifty states in play,” Giuliani said, pouring out some carefully worded frustrations about how his party has shrivelled in the Northeast. “That doesn’t mean he can win fifty states. Nobody ever wins fifty states. It means he can compete in fifty states. When he’s nominated, there’ll be an active campaign in New York, there’ll be an active campaign in New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, California, Washington, Oregon. If somebody else is nominated, they’ll go back to the thirty-five-state strategy. This is very frustrating for Republicans in this part of the world. They haven’t had a Presidential campaign since probably ’84, maybe ’88 in some places. It’s also helped to deteriorate the Party.”

So? Well, it wasn’t that many weeks ago that Giuliani was repeatedly claiming that he was the only guy in the GOP who could credibly mount a 50-state campaign. But, hey times change.

Mike Huckabee has been projected the winner of Saturday’s Kansas caucuses, according to Fox News and CNN.

Huckabee holds a commanding lead over Sen. John McCain — 62 percent to 22 percent, with 76 percent of precincts reporting. Ron Paul is third with 11 percent.

Today’s caucuses will award 36 pledged delegates to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Earlier this morning, Huckabee announced in a speech to a conservative organization that he planned to remain in the race.

“Am I quitting? Let’s get this settled right now. No, I am not,” he said.

Kansas was holding only Republican caucuses today. Democrats held their caucuses earlier this week, on Super Tuesday. Sen. Barack Obama won with 74 percent of the vote.

Three other states are voting today. Louisiana has a Democratic and Republican primary, Washington state has caucuses for both parties and Nebraska is holding Democratic caucuses.

A new poll of registered voters in Minnesota 10 months before the general election Democratic presidential candidates handily beating their Republican counterparts — with the notable exception of John McCain.

The poll, conducted by this week by SurveyUSA for three of the state’s TV stations, posed head-to-head matchups of either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama against McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee.

A few grains of salt: Much like national polls at this stage in the campaign, this poll can be as much about name recognition as about the state of the race if the election were held today. Also, with a relatively small sample size of 550 poll respondents, the survey has a whopping margin of error of 4.3 percentage points. That said, here are the matchups:

McCain, 49%
Clinton, 45%
Undecided, 6%

McCain, 49%
Obama, 42%
Undecided, 9%

Clinton, 50%
Romney, 40%
Undecided, 9%

Obama, 55%
Romney, 36%
Undecided, 10%

Clinton, 51%
Giuliani, 40%
Undecided, 9%

Obama, 52%
Giuliani, 36%
Undecided, 11%

Clinton, 50%
Huckabee, 42%
Undecided, 8%

Obama, 49%
Huckabee, 42%
Undecided, 10%

Full poll results and methodology are available here.

Mitt Romney’s win in Michigan leaves the Republican contest all shook up — and that means that all the leading candidates have a genuine shot at winning the nomination in St. Paul.

Republicans seem to farther away from settling on a nominee than they did before the Iowa caucuses kicked things off. At least back then it was easy — wrong, as it turns out, but easy — to forget Mike Huckabee and to dismiss Sen. John McCain.

Even now, it’s tempting to discount Fred Thompson, who hasn’t managed anything better than third place so far. But then again, he was only one percentage point behind Romney in New Hampshire. And now the race heads South.

Even Rudy Giuliani’s chances appear to grow stronger with each passing election that fails to produce a clear front-runner.

What it all adds up to is this: anything seems possible, and moreso by the day.

Here’s a candidate-by-candidate assessment as we head for the next great mystery in South Carolina on Saturday.

Mitt Romney
A series of silver-medal finishes might actually be the ticket to winning the nomination this year, and now with a decisive win in Michigan, Romney has strengthened his position. Sure, he was born and raised there, but then again he’s been away for decades. And perhaps more important, he won or at least fared well with conservatives and religious voters — two groups that he’s had trouble persuading so far. It’s hard to say where his next win will come. But maybe he doesn’t need another one; maybe he just keeps collecting his silver medals all the way to the top step of the podium in St. Paul.

Sen. John McCain
No question, the Michigan loss was a big blow. He won the state in 2000, but didn’t come close this time, despite carrying the momentum out of New Hampshire. The glimmer of hope in the Michigan results is this: as badly as he lost, he nevertheless won handily among voters who said Iraq was the most important issue and among military veterans. And South Carolina has a larger percentage of veterans than does Michigan. On the downside, South Carolina is also more conservative than Michigan and McCain faltered there in 2000 when he was the victim of a below-the-radar smear campaign.

Mike Huckabee
He’s a southerner, and his appeal to evangelical voters — which jolted the Iowa caucuses — could very well carry the day on Saturday. After New Hampshire, Huckabee conceded Michigan and, as he said last night, planted his flag in South Carolina. On the downside, he’s not the only southerner on the ballot.

Fred Thompson
Could South Carolina be the state that revives the former senator from Tennessee? He’ll have to duke it out with Huckabee, but at least he’s back on more familiar ground. And with the race remaining incredibly fluid and with so many voters making up their minds at the last minute, who knows what chord he might strike, just as Romney did in the closing days in Michigan.

Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani’s national, Super Tuesday strategy is looking more and more plausible. Florida is coming up on Jan. 29, and he’s running neck-and-neck-and neck with McCain, Huckabee and Romney there. And he could win in big states like New York, New Jersey and California on Feb. 5. On the downside, as bsimon noted in a clever comment to an earlier post here, every time Giuliani focuses on a new state, his numbers there go down.

What do you think happens next? Are you ready to eliminate any of them from contention? How and where and when does this all get settled?

And finally, just to recap the race so far, here are the results for the top candidates in each state, with the winner in bold.

The Republicans
……………………….Huckabee……McCain…..Romney
Iowa…………………….34……………13………..25….
New Hampshire………11……………37………..32….
Michigan……………….16……………30………..39….

The morning after his loss in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney returned home and kicked off an intensive and highly successful week of campaigning in Michigan.

Here’s what he did right, and why he won.

He reestablished his personal connections to the state, he won the conservative vote, he held his own among religious voters, and he spoke more convincingly and with more optimism to the economic fears of Michigan voters.

Here are the key findings of the exit poll, as reported by AP and the TV networks, which help explain Romney’s victory.

Nearly half the voters in the Republican primary said that they made up their mind about who to vote for only in the last week, and Romney won handily among that group, especially among those who made their decision in the last three days.

Also, 42 percent of the voters considered Romney’s ties to the state important, and nearly 60 percent of those voters backed him.

Romney has struggled to persuade conservatives that he shares their values and that they can count on him, but not in Michigan. Conservatives accounted for 56 percent of the Republican voters, and Romney won 41 percent of their vote, compared with 23 percent for McCain.

Likewise, Romney fared well among religious voters. While Mike Huckabee swept to victory in Iowa on the strength of the evangelical vote — and he won the most fervent religious vote in Michigan — Romney prevailed among the 54 percent of voters who said the religious beliefs of a candidate mattered a great deal or somewhat.

Finally, Romney tapped into the most important issue in the race — the economy. Fully 55 percent of voters said that was the top issue facing the country — and Romney won 42 percent of those voters, compared with just 29 percent for McCain.

Romney tells AP: “It’s a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism. The people of Michigan said they believe in someone who is going to fight for them.”

That’s a reference to McCain’s “straight talk” that some of the jobs in the state were gone for good. Romney pledged to convene a summit within his first 100 days as president to develop plans to bring those jobs back.

CNN, FOX, MSNBC and AP all say that based on the exit polls and the early returns they project that Mitt Romney will win Michigan.

For the call to be made so early, Romney must have a decisive margin over McCain.