Let me give you some straight talk friends, here is how the west was lost.

After looking at the recent travel schedules and events planned by presidential hopeful Senator John McCain, one has to ask: What exactly do his internal polls show and who is giving him advice? It would appear some Giuliani strategists have joined the McCain ranks and are now giving the current front-runner some Floridaesque advise.

The fight is out West and Sen. McCain ain’t in the fight.

Despite Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and numerous other extreme conservatives support of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. McCain enjoyed comfortable leads in CA and AZ going into last weekend. It appeared, for better or worse depending on your beliefs, that the Sort-of-Straight-Talk Express was on the road to November. The McCain internals called for a landslide victory in the most important state of Tuesday, California.

Then McCain made perhaps the biggest tactical campaign blunder since Rudy’s Florida fiasco. He got overconfident, actually believed he was the inevitable nominee, and he [gasp] left the Wild Wild West for the likes of New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. These are all states that were out of play regardless of what any other campaign was doing. McCain will win New York and New Jersey by 10-20+ points. Romney will win Mass. by 10-20+ points. So what’s the point of campaigning in those states? The answer may be both worrying and comforting to McCain supporters. The only plausible answer to why he has set up a camp 2000 miles away from the war was that he was flat broke. He needed to raise funds and with the recent endorsement of Rudy and the predicted “inevitability” of his getting the nominee, he made a dash for the cash in states that were out of play on Tuesday. Bad Move.

Romney, seeing a recently vacated West, where Huckabee is a non-factor, went to work. He started by being seen collecting a surfboard in Orange County, California. The heart and soul of California’s conservative base. He then moved on to Colorado. A state, coupled with Nevada, which may very well be the 2000 Florida of the 2008 general elections. The result? Romney up by 19%.

Then, after some detours, back to winner-take-all Utah. Which was never really in play but will show a margin of victory the likes have never been seen. The Deseret News is predicting an 80 point win for Romney in the Beehive State. That’s right Romney 84, McCain 4. Despite McCain’s early visits to Utah, it appears it was also never really in play.

Romney then moved through some midwest states. Missouri was probably a waste of time for Romney but Minn. was not as it apportions delegates.

According to his schedule, which may be a corporate M&A style smoke shield, Romney will head to Tennessee and Georgia (where he sniped a very important Thompson supporter, Eric Johnson, who may single handedly deliver an astonishing southern Romney victory) and then race back to Cailfornia, where he is now the front runner, to hold a quick rally and media shoot in time for it all to go up on the California local evening news.

I need to point out here that Romney is effectively doing what I call “running the tides“. Gov. Mike Huckabee parishioners can tell you that when fishing from your bass boat on tidal waters, you need to run your boats in certain directions while fishing depending on time of the day and tides or you’ll severely limit your effective fishing time. Gov. Romney ran the tides today which effectively gives him an additional 4 hours of campaigning. It’s simple start in the East and end in the West.

Senator McCain, realizing his flanks have been breached, is currently racing back to California to hold a rally. Finally he’s going to engage the enchilada. The Maverick is going to come back to California swinging . . . or not. It appears that after his rally in Gardena (which should at least get him face time on the local news) he is astonishingly heading back to NJ and NY??? What the hell is he thinking? Not only is he going to the wrong battlegrounds, he’s running the tides in the wrong direction in the middle of the day. McCain will spend 8 hours of the day on an airplane and end on the East coast.

Somebody needs to fire the Giuliani advisers that have latched onto McCain and tell Maverick that the fight is in California and that he’s never backed down from a fight. The advisers seem to have incorrectly believed that either the West was firmly in the McCain Camp, or that Romney will win big in the West and thus they need to fatten the coffers for life after Total Test Tuesday. Now the question is, will Romney carry McCain’s home state of Arizona? A quick Phoenix touchdown on the way to CA may cement the Senators home state for Romney. McCain’s Arizona boys are wondering, some of them aloud, “where’s the hometown love?”

Those Gladiator fans can see the scene now, as the anointed one deplanes tomorrow night in San Diego, on the eve of the enchilada being eaten by Romney, “My friends . . . have I missed the battle?” His disheartened California rank and file will then reply with “No Sir, you have missed the war.”

Of course, McCain will have the most delegates after Tueday. But California is the real prize with everything else being peripheral. If McCain wins CA, it’s over for the conservative realists. Utah, Montana and Alaska are not going to give Romney much MO. The winner of California, regardless of all other outcomes, will have the momentum coming out of Tuesday.

Senator McCain could use some good old 80’s Ice Man advice . . . “Engage Maverick . . . damnit engage.”