While the Romney endorsement doesn't insure that all of his 280 or so delegates go right to McCain, it does help McCain's drive to unify his party for November.

Romney had been especially tough on McCain during the primaries for not being a true conservative, a charge that had resonated with many Talk Radio hosts and some conservative voters.

Now that Romney is casting his lot with McCain, the Arizona Senator can make an even more effective pitch that he can bring the GOP together for November.

And it also increases pressure on Mike Huckabee to get out of the race, especially on the same weekend that Huckabee is flying down to the Cayman Islands to give a paid speech, taking him off the campaign trail for two days.

Realistically, Huckabee may only last in the race through March 4th, when Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont vote. Four McCain wins that day would most likely give him enough delegates to claim victory.

In a statement issued last night, Huckabee acknowledged rumors about his own campaign's future, and said flatly "I am in this race until someone gets to 1,191 delegates. That has not happened yet."

Not yet.

Polls Offer Clinton Some Encouragement

After days of negative publicity about her campaign, things looked like they couldn't get much worse on Thursday when a new Rasmussen poll on the national race was trumpeted on the Drudge Report.

It showed Barack Obama up by 12 points on Hillary Clinton nationally, evidence that his "wave" was sweeping the nation.

But in the next hour, two polls from Quinnipiac and another from Rasmussen had some Hillary Hope.

The Quinnipiac polls were completed on Tuesday in Pennsylvania and Ohio and both showed Clinton with strong leads of 21 points in Ohio and 16 points in Pennsylvania.

In a sense, that surprised me, but it didn't. Clinton has played much better with the Beer and Shot Working Man crowd than with the Wine and Cheese Limousine Liberals.

But I would have thought by now that Obama would have made more inorads in those two big states, simply because people have been watching what's been going on in the overall race.

Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll from Wisconsin had Obama ahead only by four points. Conventional wisdom has been that he would cruise to victory there.

I will repeat again that I'm viewing almost all polls these days with a big dose of skepticism.

Let's repeat the basic landscape for March 4: If Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, she's in this race to stay. And things will get ugly in the scramble for superdelegates.

But if Obama wins Ohio and Texas, or even splits with Hillary, then the playing field would seem to be tilted in the favor of the Illinois Senator.