Huckabee Wins Kansas and Louisiana
With John McCain having a basically unbeatable lead, it’s easy to forget that he’s still not officially the candidate. Huckabee added another state to his belt today, showing that he still has solid support despite John McCains all-but-assured victory.
Reading the article I’m struck how, though he highlights differences of opinion with McCain, he’s also being much nicer, and acknowledgment that McCain is now the candidate to all practical purposes. Me thinks he’s vying for VP position.
Another thing that struck me was this:
“One of the things Sen. McCain and I are bringing to the race… we are the two who have run a rather civil campaign,’’ he said. “I know a lot of people like to see people get in mix it up and bloody each other… We want to save the swords for the other guys… I believe it is one of the reasons we are the two’’ left in the running.
Hmmm I seem to recall something…what was it….oh yes, it was this:
“Don’t Mormons believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers”
Oh yeah, real civil.
Update: Huckabee also has Louisiana now, and came within 1% of McCain in Washington. Additionally, Ron Paul got 20 and Mitt Romney despite dropping out, got 17%. Republicans need to seriously start working on their unity. McCain is being sold as inevitable, but the voters don’t seem to agree.
Winning Louisiana is not as impressive as it looks. Because he took under 50%, he doesn’t get the winner-take-all on the 20 delegates available. Instead the delegates will be split up later by the state GOP convention–and will be officially uncommitted. And the other 27 LA delegates are all officially unpledged regardless of who wins the primary! In Washington the situation is even a little weirder. 18 of the 40 delegates go to the caucus winner, 19 are awarded by Congressional district winner in the Feb 19th primary (yes, they have BOTH caucus and primary!) and 3 unpledged delegates belong to the state party. Huckabee is already guaranteed to get less than half the WA delegates–he’s fighting now for a share of the other half.
Whenever people remember the 2008 race they will remember Huckabee. He surprised everybody. And as an American living in the Netherlands I was especially impressed by his views on foreign policy in his speech "paths and priorities in the war on terror" where he talks about Europe: " life for European Muslims is different from life for American Muslims". And "Unintentionally, some of our closest allies are producing some of our clearest threats". Huckabee is not a nice candidate, he is a fighter and someone who can use the arguments of his opponents to his own advantage like his latest: "I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles and still believe in ‘m!".