Super Tuesday Postmortem: Colorado Caucus Results

Update (1:30 pm)--Note to Sen. McCain-telling conservatives to "calm down" is no way to build bridges with GOPers like those in Colorado ready to bolt from the party or simply sit on their hands

Update (1:00 pm)--Eye-rolling "Dems are nonpartisan, Republicans are conservative" caucus analysis of the day:

"Obama's that creative-society, nonpartisan, new-advocate-for-change Democrat that we like here," said Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli, pointing to former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, Sen. Ken Salazar and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

Mitt Romney's win over John McCain, on the other hand, showed that Republicans were backing conservative, core-party values over more moderate views.

Update (12:00 pm)--Ben DeGrow links to the "trust but verify" scenarios that will offer McCain perhaps his only chance at mending fences with conservatives; more observations of "barely organized chaos" from Roger Fraley; Dem blogger Wash Park Prophet sees Democrat enthusiasm as providing coattails for Mark Udall and other Dem candidates this fall

Update (7:00 am)--voter turnout percentage, based on voter registration for each party and the closed caucus rules-13.6% of Democrats caucused vs. 6.4% of Republicans

Update (3:30 am)--record turnout in Colorado-8x for Democrats (120,000 in 2008 vs. 15,000 in 2004) and 65,000 Republicans

Initial thoughts--despite his Super Tuesday success, here are the image problems in a nutshell John McCain will face in the coming months in his quest to court conservatives in the GOP base (via the awesome Michael Ramirez):