Writing about the collapse of the McCain campaign in New York, John Heilemann offers up a well-tested cliché: praise for a Republican who has no real chance of winning. Heilemann is writing for an audience of readers who have probably had little personal contact with Republicans; it’s easy for him to tell them how badly off the GOP will be without McCain. Heilemann also believes that McCain’s only chance of survival is to “resuscitate his previous image” as a straight-talking iconoclast who boldly defies Republican Party elders (and, by the way, who also lost in the last presidential race).

Heilemann misses the most interesting point about McCain’s seemingly imminent departure from the presidential primaries: this will be the first Republican primary campaign in memory in which the establishment candidate does not end up the winner. Ford in ’76, Reagan in ‘80, Bush in ’88, Dole in ’96, and G.W. Bush in 2000 were all the choices of the establishment fund-raisers and veteran political advisers. For all his reputation as a maverick, McCain began this campaign as a Washington-insider establishment favorite. (The fact that Warren Rudman is one of his campaign chairmen is all you need to know.) Heilemann blames McCain’s woes on precisely this strategy, but historically, it’s been a primary winner.

The question remains whether any of the remaining viable candidates will try to get themselves anointed as the establishment choice. Giuliani, Romney, and Fred Thompson are all styling themselves, legitimately, as Washington outsiders. And that may be a good thing. History shows that the GOP predilection for choosing the establishment candidate doesn’t always work out so well: Ford in ’76, Dole in ’96…