California Conservative

As I said here and here, Mike Huckabee won’t win the GOP nomination this year, which is a good thing because he’s a second tier candidate that’s overstayed his welcome. He’s now displaying the wrong-headed thinking that should eliminate him as the ‘next in line’ candidate. Here’s what Ed Rollins said about Gov. Huckabee staying in the race:

Asked whether Huckabee risks overplaying his hand, his campaign chairman, Ed Rollins said he didn’t think so.

“I think he’s made it very clear that until either he or McCain have 1,191 delegates, he’s going to stay in this thing. We always wanted to get it down to one-on-one,” Rollins said Monday. “This is what he wants to do. Getting Romney out of the race obviously eliminates a guy who had an advantage with money.”

Huckabee and McCain “respect each other. They’re both men of integrity,” Rollins said. “Tomorrow is a big day. We’ll keep going as long as we can.”

As of last Friday, Gov. Huckabee needed to win 83.3 percent of the remaining delegates, McCain only 40 percent. That raises the question of why Huckabee chooses to keep going. That’s a pertinent question considering Rollins’ statement that “We’ll keep going as long as we can.” There’s nothing in his statement about winning. It doesn’t sound like he gives a rip about winning.

Don’t think that people aren’t noticing that Mitt Romney dropped out for what he called the good of the party in keeping the White House. The only thing that makes sense is that Huckabee is hanging in to be McCain’s running mate.

Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican consultant not associated with a candidate, said Huckabee is helping to burnish his own reputation as perhaps “the next man in line” for Republicans in a future contest “so long as he’s amassing delegates.”

“With Romney out of the race, Huckabee became a repository for the anti-McCain vote. I think for conservatives, it doesn’t hurt for a while here to make sure Senator McCain and his folks understand that the fissures that conservatives have with Senator McCain didn’t happen overnight, and are not going to be resolved overnight,” said Mueller. “One of the reasons Huckabee is staying in is to give a voice to conservatives so that we are a very strong presence going into the convention.”

I strongly disagree with Mueller’s statement that “Huckabee is helping to burnish his own reputation as perhaps “the next man in line” for Republicans” because he’ll never be a solid candidate. He’s a regional candidate at best. He’s a socialist economically. It’s also laughable to think that social conservatives won’t have a strong presence at the convention.

Another trait that won’t play well is that it’s all about him. Everything Huckabee does is to glorify himself. The truth is that Gov. Huckabee is a petty individual.

That becomes more apparent because he isn’t given much chance to win the “Potomac Primary“:

McCain is heavily favored to win all three contests in tomorrow’s primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, but he nonetheless continued to campaign in the region yesterday, dashing off to a rally at the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond after his stop in Annapolis.

McCain was introduced there by former Navy Secretary and now-Virginia Sen. John Warner, and his strength among military service members and veterans, who form a huge voting bloc in Republican primaries, was made plain by the crowd of several hundred.

I’m not a big McCain supporter but I am a realist. He’ll be the GOP nominee. McCain’s next chore is to start mending fences with conservatives. To do that, he needs to have a long, sincere conversation with them. That means that he’ll need to make a couple concessions to conservatives. Huckabee’s yapping makes it that much more difficult to have that conversation.

I’ll personally promise Huckabee supporters that I’ll make it my personal mission to inform them on Gov. Huckabee’s liberal policies. I know from talking with friends of mine at church that they liked his pro life views. When I told them what else he stood for, their opinion instantly changed.

Technorati Tags: Mike Huckabee, Ed Rollins, Liberal, John McCain, John Warner, Military, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Foreign Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.