ASHINGTON - Now on to the next round.
They have debated about taxes, bickered about advertisements, fought for the high ground as reformers, wrestled over the definition of conservatism, sparred over leadership, style, philosophy, and approach. But neither Senator John McCain, yesterday's victor in Michigan and Arizona, nor Governor George W. Bush, Saturday's victor in South Carolina, has discovered how to knock the other out of the struggle for the Republican presidential nomination.
And so the race that the experts said was over before it began has apparently not even begun to be over.
But already it is clear that the Republican race represents a fundamental change in American politics.
In the old politics, the field of candidates was winnowed by voters. This time it was narrowed by fund-raisers. In the old politics, the independents and party defectors who ordinarily hold the balance of power in American elections made their voices heard in November. This time they are bellowing in February.
As a result, the entire architecture of presidential politics has been altered. A process that once was in the firm control of party bosses was loosened in the 1970s and 1980s, as the proliferation of primaries transformed the nomination fight from a private selection to a public audition.
The election of 2000 has taken that trend of ''openness'' - by far the favored word of the theorists and reformers who fought to implement the primaries in the first place - and extended it, drawing in huge numbers of independents and Democrats and thus reshaping the system into a form that would be unrecognizable to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, and even the elder George Bush, the pillars of the old style of Republican politics.
The number of voters in Michigan yesterday was twice the number who voted four years ago; South Carolina and New Hampshire also saw record turnouts. These newcomers also have made the outcome of primaries unpredictable, transformed the tone of debates, added unpredictability and excitement to the Republican contest, affected the course of the Democratic presidential campaign, and raised serious questions about whether a party can or ought to control access to the nomination process, its most important function.
The surge of newcomers into Republican politics gave McCain his victory in New Hampshire, turned up the pressure in South Carolina, and rousted Michigan Republicans from their sleepy complacency. McCain won independents by a ratio of about 2 to 1 in both Michigan and South Carolina and by 3 to 1 in New Hampshire. Only a quarter of his supporters in Michigan yesterday were Republicans - and almost a third of them were Democrats.
These new participants have added new challenges to contenders for the nomination, giving the struggle of the winter and spring much of the same flavor as a general-election fight of the summer and fall.
And though New Hampshire's primary, only three weeks ago, now feels as if it were held in some long-ago age, its lessons continue to reverberate through the political system. The day of the primary, some 117,000 voters - a third of them same-day registrants, the remainder independents - showed up to vote in a contest they weren't expected to participate in. These were voters the candidates wouldn't have courted before, and perhaps didn't court this time - a huge pool of people who aren't considered participants in normal partisan politics.
But the notion of what is normal in party politics is shifting dramatically this month. Those normally excluded are demanding to play a role. Those normally in control are battling to retain their perquisites. Those who once watched from afar are crowding in and claiming a role, even affecting the outcome of contests in a party to which they do not belong and whose ideas they do not share.
It is a quiet revolution, being conducted behind the curtains of polling stations, and the result is a system that, though less predictable, is also less restricted.
Now, against that backdrop, the Republican contest goes on.
Bush holds the whip hand, the money, the endorsements, the old-line Republicans. McCain has the enthusiasm, the esprit of the insurgent, the support of the independents. The geography and the mathematics support Bush. The chemistry leans toward McCain.
A week ahead are contests in Washington state, Virginia, and North Dakota, which never before have played important roles in selecting a nominee but now draw heightened attention. Then, on March 7, comes a huge round of contests in large states, including California, New York, Ohio, and the remaining New England states.
McCain has to make big inroads then. A week's delay would be too late. On March 14 the significant contests are in Texas and Florida. Both states have Republican governors. Both of them are named Bush.
