So I thought, watching maybe half of it yesterday.  Now in WSJ Political Diary, John Fund reports it was a hit with a surprising variety of big wigs:

“It was a great speech, with a perfect tonal pitch,” said Don Devine, a former Reagan administration official who is normally a dour pessimist when it comes to GOP electoral chances. “I think he could beat Hillary.” Ken Blackwell, a former GOP candidate for governor from Ohio, called the speech “the start of a great conversation with conservatives and much better than I expected.”

Even Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader who has clashed often with the Arizona senator in the past, grudgingly acknowledged that he might bring himself to vote for Mr. McCain in the fall — a major concession from someone who has publicly stated that the party’s new presumptive nominee has been “the most destructive force against [the GOP] of any elected official I know.”

It was “a thundering speech,” said Fund.  Ditto at this end.  Wow, in fact.  I heard him introduce his supporters in Boston on Monday and saw an accomplished speaker and in this case m.c. at work.  And substance:

“He said all the right things, and if he now delivers, we have a chance to unite the movement,” concluded Richard Viguerie, a conservative who spent much of the last few months denouncing most of the GOP field for apostasy.

It’s enough to get a guy interested.

“Despite his flaws as a candidate,” says John Hinderaker in an arresting call for “a reality check” by conservatives at this moment of history, “John McCain has at least one major strength: he might actually win.”

He cites Hugh Hewitt, Roger Simon, and Bill Whittle per Glenn Reynolds as help towards performing such a check, in addition to his own, concluding persuasively:

So, let’s finish out the primary season. It’s not over yet, lightning could strike, and Romney might wind up as our nominee. Most likely, though, John McCain will be the Republican standard-bearer. We could do a whole lot worse. Within the party, it’s time to dial down the hyperbole, quit burning bridges and start building them.

We could do worse, indeed.

Republicans face a very bad situation come November, says the radically astute Ann Coulter:

The bright side of the Florida debacle is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president – on a personal level, she’s still a little creepy.) I’d rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we’ll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility.

Thing is, Pres. McCain comes up with leftist stuff, Repubs will back him up, at least at first and at least most, says C.  She mocks him in trademark style:

McCain’s neurotic boast that he is the only Republican who supported the surge is beginning to sound as insane as Bill Clinton’s claim to being the “first black president” – although less insulting to blacks. As with the Clintons, you find yourself looking up such tedious facts as this, which ran a week after Bush announced the surge:

“On the morning of Bush’s address, Romney endorsed a troop surge.” – The National Journal, Jan. 13, 2007

That’s her view of McCain as liar.  The bad situation would find its conclusion in the four years following next January, assuming the nation picks McCain:

At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they’re supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas – tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals – Republicans in Congress will support “our” president – just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush’s great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.

At least under H., she argues, Repubs would know the enemy and go after her hammer and tong, tooth and nail — maybe, say I: they would still be looking over their shoulders at the NYTimes and its lemming-like cabal. 

However, and here she concludes rather weakly, pragmatism will out —  and isn’t that the heck of it?  I accept the universe, said the lady sitting next to Winston Churchill at dinner, to which the great man replied, By God, you’d better.

Meanwhile, the universe is ours to mold, more or less, as the beat and debate goes on.  The dice are not yet cast, our Rubicon not yet crossed, and the irksome realities surrounding and embodying McCain are not yet to be downplayed.

Update: More on McCain the fibber from Robert Novak.  Buzz was McC dissed Alito as too conservative, McC remembered saying no such thing.  But:

In fact, multiple sources confirm his negative comments about Alito nine months ago.

Problem is, says Novak,

McCain, as the ‘straight talk’ candidate, says things off the cuff that he sometimes cannot remember exactly.

Yes.  Thing is, to keep the heat on him, getting him out and up front with support for the likes of Alito and tax-cutting, says N.

More update:  Oh my, what about this shot at McCain the Impulsive, from PowerLine’s Paul Mirengoff?

McCain’s tendency to make snap judgments based on prejudice rather than information, and his hostility to information that doesn’t conform to his prejudices, is perhaps the most frightening aspect of candidacy. It is also the most stark difference between McCain and Romney, outstripping any substantive disagreements in my view.

For instance,

He opposes drilling in ANWR because, in his words, the area is “pristine” (which in this case means barren) and he “wouldn’t drill in the Grand Canyon.” Has any candidate ever presented a less serious analysis of an important policy question?

He opposes waterboarding in part because “torture doesn’t work.” Maybe the things the North Vietnamese did to him at the Hanoi Hilton didn’t work, but we know from eye-witness accounts that waterboarding worked. When I asked McCain about this, he essentially accused the CIA of lying.

Hmmm.

More update: Sounding the death knell for the Romney campaign in the WSJ Political Diary, WSJ man Daniel Henninger cited his data-dumping in debate and on stump as major problem:

As Mike Huckabee might put it, the bane of the Romney candidacy was Bain & Company. Bain is the consulting firm where by his own admission Mr. Romney learned how to think about the world — through the eyes of a management consultant. As any CEO who has ever hired one of these firms will tell you, they are fascinating guys to talk to but you wouldn’t want them actually running your company.

Or as my friend Charlie Herman used to tell me, they borrow your watch to tell you what time it is, then keep the watch.

The issue that won’t go away, McCain leading Romney or not, is McCain as someone who knows how to run things:

No offense to motivational speakers, but real-world management skills are useful too. That’s a McCain weak point.

Says Collin Levy in the subscription-only Wall St. Journal Political Diary. 

The truth is, Mitt Romney’s management skills are unquestioned by those who dealt with him at Bain Capital and the Salt Lake City Olympics, whereas Mr. McCain’s reputation for staff work at the Commerce Committee was less than stellar — in fact, it was a source of consistent and vocal complaint by those who did business with the committee.

It’s the economy, stupid, it’s the war vs. Islamo-fascism, it’s judges, it’s tax-cuts, it’s lots of things.  But the man in charge better know how to run the show.

Here’s an overlong but (also) persuasive pitch for Romney, to go as counterpoint to Dennis Byrne’s column below:

When it comes to the economy and judges, Mitt’s the One!

Bad economic news highlights the need for a President with the credentials of Mitt Romney, not political maverick John McCain, Mitt’s chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination.

That’s boilerplate: he’s the one for the economy.  But contained within this presentation is an even more important case for Romney, his being a more experienced and responsible manager.  Quoting National Review:

At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington…, Romney offers proven executive skill.

Governors generally do, some more than others.  Senators generally do not.  GW was a governor but not a very good executive — “Heckuva job, Brownie” and all that.  But for president we want an executive, do we not?

This writer, NY lawyer Michael Gaynor, a gung-ho Romney supporter, also cites Wikipedia — McCain as goof-off until he was a hero, Romney as an achiever of the first water. 

Like Dennis Byrne, he picks judge-selection as crucial, citing McCain’s “gang of fourteen” membership aimed at blocking or compromising in appointments of conservatives.  In this he focuses on McCain as legislator- compromiser.

As for Romney, having the Judicial Confirmation Network in his corner says it all.

There’s more to be said about all this, but let us close with Thomas Sowell’s comment at Real Clear Politics a few weeks ago:

When it comes to personal temperament, Governor Romney would rate the highest for his even keel, regardless of what events are swirling around him, with Rudolph Giuliani a close second.

Temperament is far more important for a President than for a candidate. A President has to be on an even keel 24/7, for four long years, despite crises that can break out anywhere in the world at any time.

John McCain trails the pack in the temperament department, with his volatile, arrogant, and abrasive know-it-all attitude. His track record in the Senate is full of the betrayals of Republican supporters that have been the party’s biggest failing over the years and its Achilles heel politically.

Ouch! for McCain supporters, and let’s hear it! from Romney-ites — and, I may add, for those who have executive ability in mind when voting for the chief executive.