From the Democrats’ point of view, the best thing the Republicans can do is keep up their current clown show for as long as possible, with as many of the clowns as possible staying in as long as possible.

From this perspective, it looks like the Michigan primary gods delivered a perfectly gift-wrapped present to Democrats on Tuesday night.

A while ago I wrote that clearly none of the current crop of clowns can win the Republican nomination, a fact which gives each candidate hope as he looks around at the rest of the field (forgetting to look at himself in the mirror, of course).

The necessary corollary of that argument is that the most critical thing to each candidate-from-hell is not losing (i.e., not falling so far behind that you can no longer be regarded as a clown of the first water). As long as you stay in, you have a damned good chance of winning, at least as good as any other first-water clown (assuming that the ultimate nominee will be one of the first-water clowns).

So, one, this was a do-or-die primary for Mitt Romney. If Romney hadn’t won, then John McCain or Mike Huckabee would have won. Whichever of them it was, he would look like the clear front-runner (for now). Romney would pretty much have slipped from first water rank, given his pedigreed connections to Michigan politics. Two, Rudee would also have started looking shaky. His so-called strategy would have been dead in the water:

The former New York mayor is spending most of his time and most of his money campaigning in Florida, which votes January 29. The Giuliani campaign’s strategy has been to de-emphasize early votes and instead concentrate on Florida and the coast-to-coast primaries which follow on February 5.

That strategy only has a chance of success if there’s no clear Republican front-runner heading into the Florida primary. Romney’s defeat of Sen. John McCain of Arizona means that three different candidates have now won the first three major contests of the race — leaving the front-runner mantle up for grabs.

Michigan has saved both Romney and Rudee, and narrowly averted the disaster of the Republican clown show being reduced to a cast of two. So now Huckabee, McCain and Romney have all won one. Rudee has still not lost. All four of these clowns are still wearing their political clown face.

Works for me.