Mike Huckabee is a great speaker, from the way he connects with an audience to his cadence to his ability to improvise.  He’s a funny guy who’s quick with a joke and a smile.  But like a comedian who’s got them giggling and makes one quip too many going for the full belly laugh, Huckabee’s sense of humor backfired on him today.  If there was any truth to the rumor that he was at the top of John McCain’s V.P. list - where he belongs, in my opinion - that hope may be gone now.

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Mike Huckabee’s spokesman has just told Fox News that he will be speaking within the hour and it is his intent to resign from the race for the Republican presidential nomination now that John McCain has all but won the nomination.  More later.

Huckabee’s resignation speech:

"Ladies and gentlemen I called Senator McCain a few moments ago.  It looks apparent tonight that he will in face achieved 1191 delegates to become the Republican nominee for the party.

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Mike Huckabee brought his low-budget campaign to College Station, Texas today and wowed an overflowing auditorium filled primarily with Texas A&M University college students with his populist conservative message. (more…)

Mike Huckabee continues to win southern primaries, taking the Louisiana contest yesterday while also demonstrating strength in the bible belt by taking the Kansas caucuses. Not only does the Huckster reveal his strength by winning these races, at the same time he shows the entire world McCain’s crippling weakness.

The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president cannot win the base of his own party.
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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.

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Mike Huckabee, winner of the West Virginia Republican caucus earlier today, is doing better than I, for one, had expected in the Republican South, winning - as projected by ABC - Alabama by a significant margin and, as expected, his home state of Arkansas.

More importantly, Huckabee is leading in Georgia with over 85% of the vote in. Huckabee also leads in Missouri, a state where John McCain expected to do better tonight than he has, and is also ahead of McCain in Tennessee.

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Mike Huckabee has won the first delegates of Super Tuesday, taking all 18 from the state of West Virginia, albeit with a little help from John McCain.

Mike Huckabee won the first contest declared on Super Tuesday, picking up all 18 national delegates awarded at West Virginia’s state GOP convention. Huckabee bested Mitt Romney, who entered the Mountain State event with the largest bloc of pledged convention-goers.

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Ramesh Ponnuru is right:

It has seemed a bit like the 1996 race. McCain is Dole: the old war hero who has run before, who does not enthuse either economic or social conservatives but has a pretty conservative record. Giuliani is Forbes: the socially liberal, economically conservative New York candidate. (more…)

There can be little doubt by now about the nature of Mike Huckabee’s campaign. Let me put it as simple as possible: he’s probably running the dirtiest campaign of all candidates, that includes Hillary Clinton. The organization which supports him by push-polling - Huckabee has said that he wants them to stop, but no one thinks he truly wants them to stop calling people, and there seem to be close connections between his campaign and Common Sense (the organization / company) - is now actively targeting not just Fred Thompson in South Carolina but also Senator John McCain. (more…)

During his speech Monday night in front of his most fervent supporters in Michigan, Huckabee said something that revealed perhaps the true nature of his candidacy (more…)

Looks like he’s shed his populist image for a more comfortable Christianist one.

From Raw Story:

The United States Constitution never uses the word “God” or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from “We the People.” However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it’s time to put an end to that. (more…)

The axiomatic first rule when you are in a hole is to stop digging. Well, in the aftermath of the 2006 elections, the Republican party remains in a hole. And one of its front-runners just won’t stop digging. (more…)

Via Hot Air comes the following video (below the fold): Senator Fred Thompson has, according to his supporters finally, gone after Senator for Arizona John McCain. As AP points out, “[i]t would have been more effective if he’d gone after him individually instead of lumping him in with Huck but the race being what it is in South Carolina, he doesn’t have much choice. Any attack on one benefits the other so he’s forced to attack both.” (more…)

Is Mike Huckabee carrying out a “scorched earth” campaign where he doesn’t care if he destroys the party and splits the conservative movement into its base component parts?

Sure looks that way:

“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”

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Uh-oh.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee touted his candidacy Saturday as a chance for evangelical Christians to lead the Republican Party rather than just support its candidates. (more…)

Although Mark Krikorian defends Mike Huckabee at the Corner, I have to say that I agree with the WaPo columnist who decided that it was time to spend some attention to the fact that Huckabee basically copied an immigration plan Krikorian came up with and wrote down somewhere last year.

As Dan Riehl points out, Huckabee acted as if the plan was his. He, among other things, said that he has “created a nine point immigration policy that says there is a 120 day period in which people go to their home country and start the process from the back of the line.” The problem is, of course, that Huckabee developed no such plan, he simply stole someone else’s (because his campaign didn’t have the money to hire someone to come up with an original plan probably). (more…)

Economist Steven Landsburg has a new article in Slate magazine in which he gives his approval to Huckabee’s Fair Tax plan.  His conclusion:

the underlying issue becomes a lot clearer once you realize that a sales tax is a modified income tax. The right question is: Is the proposed modification a good one? The answer, according to a growing consensus among macroeconomists, is: Yes.

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Contrary to what was discussed yesterday, Mike Huckabee today denied that he will actively pursue an amendment to the Constitution that would eliminate so-called “birthright citizenship”, saying:

I do not support an amendment to the Constitution that would prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. I have no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship

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It’s been an interesting day to be a supporter of Mike Huckabee. First, Huckabeen gave the money quote of the day speaking about what the American people want from their government. Then came the Dick Armey attack. Now, an apparent and transparent Huckabee flip-flop regarding the children of illegal immigrants: (more…)

Ouch.

In a column published at Real Clear Politics, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey lashes out at Governor Mike Huckabee. His message: social conservative’d better wake up to Huckabee’s real plans and message because if they don’t, they’ll be sorely disappointed with his policies if he becomes president (assuming that, etc.). (more…)

What do Americans want? Mike Huckabee has got it down cold:

“They want government to leave them alone, let them live their lives: They want government to do the job that it’s supposed to do, and that’s protect us, give us the capacity to be free, and then beyond that, let us live our lives”

Absolutely right. Now, can - and will - he act on that knowledge?

The video below the fold is interesting for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Huckabee once again points out that many of those who vote for him are value voters. That’s obvious. But what’s more interesting is that he, as AllahPundit notes, starts to talk about economic issues in a way that sounds (reasonably) acceptable to fiscal conservatives. He’s talking about small businesses: if he continues to play that card, he’ll do better in many other states than most anticipated.

His way to help small businesses is right out of the fiscally conservative playbook (to which fiscal conservatives - like myself - can only say “Amen”): less regulation, less taxation and less litigation. (more…)

Ed Rollins, the newly appointed Huckabee campaign chairman and famous for throwing with mud, playing it dirty, going negative, is quoted by the Washington Post as saying: “What I have to do is make sure that my anger with a guy like Romney, whose teeth I want to knock out, doesn’t get in the way of my thought process.”

Excuse me? “Whose teeth I want to knock out”? And this guy is on Huckabee campaign, more, the chairman of the former preacher’s campaign? There’s nothing even remotely Christian about saying something like that.

Mitt Romney’s reaction is an instant classic though: “don’t touch the hair.” (more…)