Senator John McCain is truly making a comeback. Polls show that, as Rasmussen puts it, “it’s a good time to be John McCain.”

Rasmussen Reports shows that John McCain’s comeback is all too real: he’s surging in Iowa and in New Hampshire. Not only that, he also has “the highest favorable rating (52%) and the smallest number committed to voting against him (33%) of any Presidential candidate in either party.” As a bonus, “the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain with a two-point advantage over Illinois Senator Barack Obama in a general election match-up (see crosstabs)” and he also has a two-point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton.

In short: it’s a good time to be John McCain.

McCain’s campaign was declared dead by a great many people only a couple of months ago. I’m afraid to admit that I was one of the people who thought that he had no chance whatsoever of winning the Republican nomination. Now, in mid-December, however, the situation has changed dramatically: suddenly, McCain’s back.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that he’s now the favorite. He’s not. Of course the problem is that there are no real favorites. McCain isn’t the favorite, but neither is Huckabee, neither is Romney, and neither is Giuliani. The only person who I’d consider slightly the favorite is Romney: he’s doing great in polls nationwide, in the early states and I think that he’s the person most conservatives will rally behind at the moment the choice is between him and Mike Huckabee.

Having said that, as long as several candidates have a shot at winning the nomination, John McCain could also very well win it. We’ve seen that Huckabee’s numbers have dropped slightly, while McCain’s numbers have gone up. Do former Huckabee supporters turn to McCain?

The more open the race is, the better McCain’s chances are of winning the nomination.

His main problem is, in my opinion, that the conservative base isn’t very fond of him due to his support for campaign finance reforms and the immigration bill that was shot down earlier this year. If he wants to win the nomination he’s got to convince at least some of these conservatives that they should support him despite his ‘missteps.’

Will he be able to do so?

The news that he’s leading both Obama and Clinton in head-to-head polls is great news for him. Many Republicans feel that there’s not a ‘good’ candidate out there; they’ll vote for the least bad option, with the ‘least bad’ probably being the person who has a good shot at beating the Democrat nominee. If McCain keeps this up, he might soon become the favorite for Republicans who want to – against all cost – prevent Clinton from becoming the 44th president.

UPDATE

Although the Boston Herald normally endorsed one candidate of either party, they’ve now chosen to endorse just one person: John McCain. The reason? They’re convinced that America needs him right now, and none of the other candidates. They also hope that this will convince some independents to support McCain.