Is Michigan Mitt's last stand?

That’s the buzz this morning but for once Hewitt’s spin is closer to the truth. As Ambinder notes, Romney’s got a devil’s triangle shaping up against him in Michigan: Huck will pull the evangelical social cons, McCain will pull the hawks and the independents (who get to skip the Democratic race because Obama’s not on the ballot), which leaves Mitt with the Fredhead “true conservative” vote. Are there enough of those in Michigan to win? I’m skeptical, but the numbers are amazingly close: If you can believe it, except for one typically crappy ARG outlier poll from September, no GOP candidate has exceeded so much as 30 percent since February. No one’s got even as much as 20 percent in the RCP average, and of the last four polls taken, no one’s topped 21 percent — with each of the big three winning at least one of those polls.

So if Mitt craters, he’s out, right? No, for reasons best explained by this short but shrewd John Ellis column. So long as there are two or more anti-Hucks competing in any primary, they split the vote and give Huckabee a fighting chance to win and build momentum. With his money and organization, Romney may hang on until Super Ultra Mega Tuesday in the hope that he’ll be the only anti-Huck left standing and the base will have no choice but to line up behind him. The problem is that Giuliani’s likely to be left standing too; like Ellis says, Huck may actually want to lose to Rudy in Florida simply to guarantee his participation on Big Tuesday. If all three are still in it come Florida, the pressure on the third-place finisher to get out and make Tuesday a head-to-head to simplify things for anti-Huck voters will be tremendous.

Needless to say, if McCain and Rudy crumble in Florida and we really are left with serial loser Mitt as the Great Hope, it’s going to be an historic fiasco. Exit question: Assuming Mitt does get out, who does he endorse? Huck and McCain seem to hate him and he’s tangled with Rudy in somewhat nasty ways at the debates. He ain’t throwing his endorsement away on ol’ Fred either. Would he politely decline to endorse anyone? Or does he make a deal with the frontrunner for some kind of cabinet position?