Okay, so maybe the pun isn’t as great as I first thought.

This race just keeps on getting more surprising.  I had heard talk Tuesday night and Wednesday of the possibility Romney might choose to drop out due to his rather unflattering showing on Tuesday.  Still, I thought he’d hang on for at least a little while longer.

Now Republicans essentially have a choice between McCain and Huckabee, and I predict that the vote will be somewhat split up.  The voters now have the choice between the conservative evangelical Huckabee and the still conservative except on a few issues McCain.

I predict that this drop is going to help both of them immensely.  After Huckabee’s good showing on Tuesday, he’s looking like a real player again.  Without Romney, I think the evangelical vote is his for the taking.  McCain, on the other hand, will take some of the perhaps less evangelical, slightly more moderate voters Romney might have had.  Yet, I’ve seen several people dispense with their party altogether and proclaim that they will vote for either Clinton or Obama.  So, I think this news might have the side effect of helping them a little bit, too.  It will be especially aparent if they start getting more votes than expected in the open and semi-open primary states.

However, even though I do think the loss of Romney will help Huckabee, I still think he’s in a tough spot.  He only has 181 delegates compared to McCain’s wopping 714.  Even if Romney’s leftover 286 votes were to get split evenly between the two (which it probably won’t, since the allocation of his delegates will be determined state by state), he’d still have an uphill battle to get anywhere close to McCain.  This is probably why some of Romney’s former supporters are jumping ship to the Democrats.  Faced with a practically unbeatable McCain, they’d rather face four years of a Democrat in the White House, and try again then.

If you thought Tuesday was an exciting day in this primary/caucus season, I don’t think you’ve seen anything yet.  I think Saturday will begin to tell the future of the Republicans for the general election.