Letters to the Editor
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Huck
It seems to me that mostly Mike is running for president in 2012. Maybe he figures that in '12 we'll have either McCain as a one-termer largely due to health concerns or a Hillary/Obama to face in a re-election campaign. Or he can even spend a few years working in the party and then run in '16 when he'll be, what, in his early 60s?
Not a bad strategy at all, actually. And he's an interesting man, easily dismissed and way underestimated.
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Lynx at the free throw line: He shoots, he SCORES!
"Our economy will soar if we become the first country to eliminate our punishing and complicated tax code"
No other country is going to eliminate our tax code. -- Lynx
oh SNAP!
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Huckabee -- "An interesting man"
he's an interesting man, easily dismissed and way underestimated.
-- Steve Judd
Well then, you must adore Pat Robertson.
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R.E.S.P.E.C.T. find out what it means to me, R.E.S.P.E.C.T., take care TCB, sock it to me sock it to me ... etc.
"Huckabee plays his bass and goofs around with Stewart and Colbert. I respect that." -- 401kBoy
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No Mystery Here
Huckabee is the yin to McCain's yan; he completes the Republican Right's search for justification. Huckabee is the Right's "raison 'd'etre", as it were.
Huckabee may be many things; an idiot he isn't. He is a cool, calculating pol who knows that, just by hanging tough, he will be the Veep for McCain. McCain being somewhere near Methuselah in age, I'd bet he wouldn't attain a second term...should he be elected to a first one.
Huckabee is one of those politicians you can look straight in the eye. Let me rephrase: you can look him straight in the eye...you just don't know which eye or in what direction each eye is looking.
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Didn't Huck weigh in on this?
I'm not sure exactly when I heard it, something like six weeks ago, but I heard a sound byte from Huckabee that explains exactly why he's (still) in the race today. The GOP has used evangelicals to build a large enough voting block to win, and then has given them the barest of bones as a thank you. He, as a bona fide evangelical, has been laughed at and dismissed by the GOP party elite... further demonstrating that the party views evangelicals as they might their crazy old uncle. Handy when you need him, ignore him when you don't.
So there's the protest campaign. He's demonstrating that something like 30% of Republican voters don't feel represented by the choices of the Republican machinery.
And then there's the God angle. In the evangelical church, it's quite common to look for internal and external signs of God's will. The external signs are that he still has the time and the money to run, and nothing else has come along that would make a bigger impact. Since he's still in the race, we must assume that the internal signs are in place too... a peace about his decision to run a losing race, moments of joy and delight along the way, a sense that he is exactly where he needs to be.
I bet he's quoted Mother Teresa more than once to his staffers, "God calls us not to be successful but to be faithful."
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Huckabee Makes McCain Look ‘Moderate’ ….
Huckabee in the race means the press keeps running stories about how McCain doesn’t connect to the ‘right wing’ of the Republican party, how ‘conservatives’ hate him. It reinforces McCain’s ‘maverick’ image with voters. The perception becomes that because ‘evangelicals’ and ‘conservatives’ don’t like him then he must be a good independent mainstream politician.
Of course this is completely false. McCain is a pure social conservative with a solid pro-life voting record and who proudly states that he will appoint more Roberts and Alitos to the Supreme Courts given the chance. His big divergences from the ‘conservatives’ are on immigration, Bush’s tax cuts and campaign finance reform. But a quick look at his voting record shows a guy who is generally lock step with his party.
And of course let’s not forget the ‘stay in Iraq for the 100 years’ and ‘bomb bomb bomb’ Iran.
But that all gets buried by the news media who constantly stress that McCain is a MAVERICK of the highest order a great guy and a ‘straight talker’ who huge chunks of the electorate believe is ‘pro-choice’ and pro gay rights and will appoint Anthony Kennedy’s to the Supreme Court.
The Huckabee candidacy reinforces that narrative and will make it easier for McCain to come in under the radar and give us four more years of Republican rule.
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"I didn't major in math..."
Yeah, that's pretty obvious, Huck. We know you didn't major in biology, either. And I would question the accreditation of a college that allowed you to major in "miracles".
I would not be surprised to find out that Huckabee is being quietly urged to stay in the race for as long as possible, because when he quits, millions of evangelical Christians will lose interest in the election altogether. Most of them don't trust McCain and never will.
But the GOP can't withstand a mass exodus of uber-Christians from the party. Huckabee's constituency, while they are a minority, have been the engine driving the Republican party since Reagan's first campaign for president. The GOP will string these folks along as long as possible.
If Huckabee is not chosen as McCain's running mate, it will probably be someone similarly palatable to fundamentalists, in the vein of Bill Frist or Rick Santorum. I would also expect a few kooky new additions to the GOP platform designed to attract the hyper-religious. But ultimately, I don't think it will work, and I look forward to increasing strife within the Republican party.
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The Rationale Behind the Huckabee Candidacy
Surely I can't be the only person who's thought of this, thus its perhaps safe to assume the dominant media wants their boy John McInsane to be the GOP nominee (which would explain why you haven't seen this scenario outlined on "Hardball"). In any event, here's why Huckabee is running: It takes 1,191 delegates to be the Republican nominee, yet if Mike Huckabee carries the March 4th, winner-take-all primary in Texas (more likely he will not, but its still a real possibility; he just lost Virginia, albeit with slightly more than 40% of the vote, and Texas should be somewhat more favorable terrain for the Huckabee campaign), it is possible that the senior senator from Arizona will arrive at the Republican National Convention with perhaps twenty or thirty delegates fewer than the number he needs to be nominated on the first ballot. Many of those delegates formally pledged to the Senator (whom I shall refer to hereafter as "War Boy") are conservative, Republican Party loyalists who do NOT actually want him to be the nominee (much like the actual RNC), and will immediately abandon him once they are no longer obligated to support his candidacy (which is to say, after he falls just a little bit short of a first ballot nomination).
I don't really think Mike Huckabee is going to be the Republican nominee even if that does occur (as I very much hope it will), but let's face it, the only way he can become the GOP nominee is if War Boy doesn't. More likely it will wind up going to Romney, or perhaps someone who didn't even run in the primaries, such as Newt Gingrich (likely with Huckabee as the Veep, due to the probable necessity of someone having to strike a deal with Huckabee in order to get the nomination; Huckabee won't pre-emptively strike such a deal with War Boy, by simple virtue of the fact he wants to see if he can get the top spot in the post-first ballot scramble that will ensue).
Its really not that complicated, frankly.