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Ann Coulter, the corrosive conservative commentator, has vowed that she will vote Democrat if John McCain wins the Republican nomination. Count one more vote for the Democrats.

If a host of recent polls are accurate, though heaven knows they've been wrong before, the Arizona senator will win today's Super Tuesday national primary, taking so many winner-take-all states that the race for the Republican presidential nomination will be all but over. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's numbers in California are improving, according to some polls, and he may choose to remain in the race in hopes that a conservative groundswell in later primaries will reverse today's verdict. But the odds are long.

So how did he do it? How did a 71-year-old veteran senator, whose campaign imploded last summer, sending most of his paid advisers looking for other jobs, recover to become the presumed Republican nominee?

It may have something to do with his years as a prisoner in Vietnam.

Mr. McCain found himself in trouble last summer because he was "burning through too much money," in the words of Robert Erikson, a political scientist at Columbia University, while competing with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani for support among the moderate wing of the Republican Party.

Once he realized he was broke, Mr. McCain fired his staff and, to quote Republican strategist Ralph Reed, "went fetal," retreating to New Hampshire and working the state relentlessly. (He held more than 100 town hall meetings in the ensuing months.) He also took out a $3-million (U.S.) line of credit, using his mailing list as collateral.

"He hunkered down, he survived," believes Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychologist at City University of New York, where he studies the psychology of politicians.

"It reminds me very much of what he had to do as a prisoner of war."

Mr. McCain's position was strengthened by the weaknesses of the other candidates.

"The primary thing is that the rest of the field was so bad," observes Michael Tanner, an analyst with the conservative Cato Institute, in Washington.

"They were all deeply flawed, and that prevented any of them from rising as the alternative."

Mr. McCain's strategy of survival worked. His win in New Hampshire propelled him back into the front ranks of the race. Because Mr. McCain was already well known and didn't need to advertise to introduce himself to voters, he was able to compete on a much smaller budget than his principal rival, Mr. Romney.

Meanwhile, Mr. Giuliani's campaign was tanking, thanks to his hubris in staking everything on the Florida primary, giving Mr. McCain sole access to the moderate-Republican field, while the conservative vote bifurcated between Mr. Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, as it continues to do today.

"If it were only Romney and McCain on the ticket, I don't think we'd be calling McCain the heir apparent today," observes Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin.

Perfectly true, yet it is also true that in head-to-head matchups with Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain usually walks away the winner. For some intangible reason, Mr. Romney does not come across as likeable.

"To some voters, he comes across a bit like a snake-oil salesman," notes Prof. Erikson, an impression compounded by Mr. Romney's unseemly conversion from liberal to conservative on social policy.

At the Cato Institute, Mr. Tanner points out that Mr. Romney has not picked up endorsements from his fellow governors, whereas everyone from Charlie Crist in Florida to Arnold Schwarzenegger in California has swung behind Mr. McCain.

Even Mr. Romney's fellow candidates like Mr. McCain better, something that the Romney campaign attributes to the Arizona senator's insider status in Washington.

Prof. Renshon believes something else may also be at work. Voters are sensing the differences in the quality of ambition that drives the candidates.

All candidates for a presidential nomination are profoundly ambitious. But some are personally ambitious - Prof. Renshon would place New York Senator Hillary Clinton in that camp - while others are ambitious for a purpose.

Mr. McCain, Prof. Renshon believes, feels "deeply bound, honour bound," to seek the presidency because he is convinced that the nation is at risk and he can best protect it.

The next question then, now that Mr. McCain seems all but certain to win the nomination, is what he's going to do with it.

The good news for the Republicans, as Prof. Buchanan observes, is that attention will now shift almost exclusively to the Democratic contest, giving the presumptive Republican leader an opportunity to reach out to the rest of the party.

The bad news is that many populist conservative leaders appear ready to dynamite the party rather than rally around Mr. McCain.

Media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin have warned that Mr. McCain, with his record of supporting immigration reform, opposing George W. Bush's tax cuts and embracing the fight against global warming, is a mortal threat to the conservative movement.

"It's going to destroy the Republican Party," Mr. Limbaugh warned his listeners last week, "It's going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren't going to vote. You watch."

How should Mr. McCain respond? First, argues Dave Rohde, a political scientist at Duke University, Mr. McCain must remind conservative voters that he is, indeed, a conservative, a leading voice for national security, staying the course in Iraq and cutting government spending.

"The idea that John McCain is not a conservative is simply madness," Prof. Rohde argues.

As for the conservative commentocracy, "there is nothing that he should do, and perhaps nothing that he can do.

"The best course might be to ignore them, and to demonstrate that they're largely irrelevant."

Though Prof. Renshon suspects Mr. McCain won't be able to resist taking on Mr. Limbaugh and his confrères.

"He does have a bit of a temper, and he does take pleasure at getting his licks in."

It would be fun to watch.