February 12: Huckabee News Roundup

As voters go to the polls today, one final American Research Group poll shows a tight race between Huckabee and McCain in Virginia. Since Saturday, Huckabee is up 7 points, McCain down 7 points:

McCain 47
Huckabee 39
Paul 4

There is a good article in the Times Record today:

It’s hard to know why pundits are making such a fuss about Mike Huckabee’s decision not to drop out of the race for his party’s nomination for president.

They argue that Huckabee should drop out now and let John McCain get to work consolidating his support. Nice job, Governor, forcing Mitt Romney out, and thanks for that. But now it’s time to take your Baptist preacher self back to the wilds of Arkansas and let the big boys get to the serious politicking.

As Arkansans, we are insulted.

To be sure, McCain has a pretty commanding lead in the delegate counts, but darned if Huckabee just doesn’t seem to keep winning states. That’s kind of inconvenient for the Let’s-Get-the-McCain-Juggernaut-Going crowd.

It’s kind of nice for the people who believe Huckabee’s voice is closest to theirs.
Did you see that Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago? The one the New England Patriots were overwhelmingly favored to win? The one they were favored to win as late as the last three minutes of the game?

Well, as they say, that’s why they play the game.

Similarly, if we were willing to give up the notion of actually letting the citizens of the country vote and just let the keen political pundits and the wise political commentators and the powerful political operatives just tell us who will be the next president, we could forego this quadrennial messiness.

In the meantime, though, we have to stick with elections.

Read the whole thing...

Pat Buchanan has a great post at WorldNetDaily:

During his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, among the best he has delivered, Mitt Romney suspended his campaign, so as not to imperil GOP prospects in the fall. Said Mitt, "If I fight on ... all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senators Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Thus did Romney endorse the John McCain view that the Democrats who intend to pull all U.S. combat brigades out by a date certain are raising the "white flag of surrender" to Islamo-fascist terror.

But when Mike Huckabee, who also delivered one of his best at CPAC, was asked if he would stand down for the good of the party, as his winning the nomination is now a near-mathematical impossibility, he brusquely dismissed such demands as "total nonsense."

"I didn't major in math," said the Baptist preacher, "I majored in miracles." Good for Huck. Why should he drop out?

For too long conservatives have suppressed their convictions or meekly submitted, so as not to oppose a Republican president or get out of step with the party leadership.

Huckabee has a chance to do himself a world of good by piling up votes and delegates and making himself a conservative alternative to McCain. But he also has a chance to serve his party and country, by putting on the table the issues neither party is addressing.

For his party's and his country's sake, as well as his own, Mike Huckabee should keep the conversation going. Because right now, his party is looking at Hillary, Obama – or Bush's third term.

Read the whole thing...

There's also a great article at Human Events by George Neumayr:

The GOP's "Big Tent" looks more and more like a Circus Tent, and the barkers inside it never wanted Mike Huckabee under its spotlight. To his success, he has ignored them, picking up victories even as they instructed him to "get out of the race."

Usually party operatives tell a candidate to drop out of the race because he is likely to do badly; in Huckabee's case, they told him to get out because they feared he would do well. On the weekend before Super Tuesday, prominent GOP operatives called Huckabee "selfish" for staying in the race. He then proceeded to sweep much of the South.

How selfish of him to win. Doesn't this Arkansas hillbilly know that he belongs in coach with the other Christian conservatives? Doesn't he see that he should let the gents from the Squash Club call the shots in the party?

Even after winning in Kansas and Louisiana, the harassing question dogged him. Surely Huckabee is one of the only candidates in American political history who, upon winning, received as the first question: So when will you be getting out of the race?

Read the whole thing...