Huckabee Keeps Fighting

CBSNews.com Reports: Trailing Badly In Delegate Count, Huckabee Refuses To Clear The Way For Presumptive GOP Nominee McCain

(CBS)  This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter Brian Montopoli.

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Barring a significant and unforeseen development involving John McCain, Mike Huckabee will not be the Republican nominee for president.

But that hasn't kept the former Arkansas governor from staying in the race, a decision that has forced McCain to keep focused on the primaries instead of shifting gears for the general election.

On Tuesday, McCain beat Huckabee by less than ten percentage points in the Virginia primary, despite McCain's status as the clear frontrunner.

"He's exposing the soft underbelly of the nominee," conservative activist Bay Buchanan said of Huckabee. "He's reminding people that this is a man who can't motivate the base of the party to go out and enthusiastically support him."

The McCain campaign has largely been respectful of Huckabee's decision to remain in the race. On Wednesday, however, McCain admitted that he would prefer Huckabee exit as soon as possible.

“Of course I’d like for him to withdraw today. It would be much easier,” McCain said. “But I respect...his right to continue in this race just as long as he wants to."

Huckabee has vowed to keep fighting at least until McCain has every single one of the 1,191 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination. He says voters deserve an election, not a coronation.

"I know people say that the math doesn't work out," Huckabee said recently. "Folks, I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those too."

Indeed, a miracle is now perhaps Huckabee's best hope. According to CBS News estimates, McCain has 815 delegates at this point, and needs 376 more to clinch the nomination. Huckabee, meanwhile, has just 199 delegates - not many more than Mitt Romney, who left the race last week and endorsed McCain on Thursday. (Click here for state-by-state delegate tallies)

After McCain won all three contests in the Potomac Primary on Tuesday, his campaign manager, Rick Davis, released a memo arguing that it was "mathematically impossible" for Huckabee to secure the nomination.

"He would need to win 123 percent of remaining delegates,” Davis wrote in the memo.

But Huckabee remains undaunted.

"When he got into this race a year ago he said he was going to run for president and that's what he's doing," said Huckabee campaign manager Chip Salzman. "He's not a quitter."

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said he supports Huckabee's decision to stay in the race.

"If you simply stop the primary right now and say John McCain is the nominee, and you have all of these voters who are passionate about the issues that Mike Huckabee addresses, it takes them off the table, and I think in the end it makes it harder for the party to unify in November and support the Republican candidate," said Perkins.

Asked if Huckabee's decision to remain in the race will push McCain further towards conservative positions, Perkins responded, "absolutely."

"He's a complex political animal," Rice University professor Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power, said of Huckabee. "I think he has loyalties to the Republican establishment as well as his evangelical constituents."

Lindsay believes that Huckabee is interested in "establishing himself as the next champion of the evangelical cause in a post-George W. Bush era."

"The results in Virginia were a message to Republican establishment that they have to extend an olive branch to this important part of their constituency," he added.

But Huckabee isn't necessarily trying to position himself as a traditional Christian leader, said Christianity Today's Ted Olsen.

"I doubt that he has designs on becoming the next Jim Dobson or Gary Bauer," said Olson. "I don't think you're going to see Mike Huckabee ministries coming out of this."

There has been talk of Huckabee as a potential vice presidential candidate for McCain, one who could deliver evangelical votes for the Republican ticket. But Buchanan argues that Huckabee has "reduced his chances of becoming the vice president dramatically" by staying in the race about two weeks longer than McCain would have liked.

And there's another factor that argues against Huckabee as a vice presidential pick: McCain doesn't do as badly with evangelical voters as one might think. On Super Tuesday, as Olsen points out, McCain picked up 29 percent of the evangelical vote, only five percentage points less than Huckabee. (Romney took 31 percent.)

"The question is are [evangelicals] really going to jump ship if you give them someone like McCain, who has a good record on abortion, who has a good record on a lot of issues that they care about," said Olsen. "It's not like McCain can't attract any evangelicals."

Even if he isn't tapped to be vice president, Huckabee could potentially fill a prominent role as an emissary to the evangelical community in a McCain administration. He does have some competition in that department, however, most notably from conservative Sen. Sam Brownback, who has been campaigning with McCain. And the longer he stays in the race, the more he risks alienating the frontrunner.

Nonetheless, Huckabee has run a shoestring campaign, and it seems feasible that he could keep it running at least until March 4th, when voters in four states, including Texas, go to the polls. Another few weeks of media coverage certainly won't hurt his national profile, and his extended run now could position him for another run at the nomination in 2012 or 2016.

And as Huckabee's paid speech to the Young Caymanian Leadership Awards in the Cayman Islands this weekend reminds us, all the exposure also isn't going to hurt his speaking fees.

"Every time he speaks he reminds people of his charisma and his charm and eloquence," said CBS News political consultant Nicolle Wallace.

But Wallace warns that Huckabee runs a risk in remaining in the race much longer.

"If he drags this out and stays in the race another two, three, four, five weeks, I think a lot of people in the party and hopefully in the press will really question his motives," she said.

[miss_storm]

A Republican debate was scheduled to take place on February 28th, 2008. It was to be sponsored by the Ohio Republican Party. This debate has since been mysteriously cancelled. A rush to judgment has ensued following the Super Tuesday elections on February 5th in which more than 21 states held primaries or caucuses. Sen. John McCain gained an enormous advantage and squeezed out Gov. Mitt Romney. Gov. Mike Huckabee was left standing as the Party%u2019s only other viable candidate.

We believe:
1) Sen. McCain should earn the respect of the Republican base by debating Mike Huckabee in one or more formal Lincoln-Douglas style debates.
2) that failure to publicly engage Gov. Huckabee in debate before March 4th should be considered a gross attempt to grab the nomination without properly demonstrating a viable candidacy.

Thus, we hereby petition Sen. McCain to accept an invitation to debate Mike Huckabee with all due haste and prove or disprove his worthiness.

To Sign this petition go to:

http://www.petitiononline.com/jkb1961/petition.html

[hwy71so]

I''m just curious if McCain is physically fit to serve...

[skymountain3]

69,665 people from Louisiana who voted Mike Huckabee to victory are being told that they wasted their time to come out and vote...That''s so completely wrong. This process has got to change.

Go Huckabee in Wisconsin!!!

[bdrlnt4rl]

hucky says, i majored in miracle, not math''

well, we can tell. romney is a true math business man, and hucky is a dreamer.

maybe hucky should take a remedial math class to calcultate his odds of winning.

[candide777]

America wants to know: where''''s the media coverage on this???? We deserve to hear the truth!
Posted by TruthBeTold- at 08:55 PM : Feb 17, 2008

Yawn -- this story has been on the net for months now. Do you know how many crackpots there are out there claiming to have dirt on a politician? The media can''t confirm any of the story; that''s why they won''t report it.

[candide777]

Candide you forget it was the socialists and communists who did this. We have freedom of religion created by a christian nation. Dictatorships led by fascists have attempted to supress free speech and ideas. Its strange that normal beliefs and actions pre 1970 concerning religious belief and expression in the public square are being attacked and supressed by liberals who want freedom from religion not freedom of religion
Posted by alanrobisch2 at 06:51 PM : Feb 17, 2008

Sorry I forgot about that, but I''m glad to see you agree completely with me that religion has no place in politics and that no law should ever be based solely on the ALLEGED fact that "God said so." No one I have ever met can be trusted to speak for God, including me, and certainly including you.

[alanrobisch]

Religious fanatics, like yourself, generally have a hard time with this distinction because you believe so fervently that you are right, and yet you are at the same time so threatened by the possibility of being wrong, that you require everyone to believe the same as you do, and if they don''''t, you attempt to criminalize them and deny them equal protection under the law.


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Posted by Candide777 at 11:59 AM : Feb 17, 2008

Candide you forget it was the socialists and communists who did this. We have freedom of religion created by a christian nation. Dictatorships led by fascists have attempted to supress free speech and ideas. Its strange that normal beliefs and actions pre 1970 concerning religious belief and expression in the public square are being attacked and supressed by liberals who want freedom from religion not freedom of religion

[marinepatriot]

Actually most polls show Huckabee and Mccain in a statistical dead heat and Huckabee keeps gaining momentum!

The experts say they can not explain it, because a normal "presumptive front-runner" should have a 70% to 15% lead.

I guess there is a lot more to Mike Huckabee than they want to admit. The people pick Huckabee. We want Huckabee.

[ivote-2009]

Well, I just came over to read the article, but since I have read some of the comments, I must respond.

God is real whether you choose to believe in Him or not. There will come a time in everyone''s life, whether it is from a hospital bed, a jail cell, a nursing home or death bed that you will call upon the name of the Lord. Life is but a fleeting moment in time and no one is guaranteed tomorrow. If you do not believe that, go visit your local cemetery and you will find people that have been buried for much longer than you have been alive, whom also had thoughts and beliefs. Your "thoughts" and "what you believe" are only that. All that remains after death is the truth that there is a God and the decision you have made for eternity... and it is a choice.

Anyone who does not believe this has been educated beyond their intelligence. You know deep down that it is true because it is written upon your heart.

[candide777]

Ohio and Texas voters are overwhelming in favor of Mike Huckabee for president.
Posted by giantrobot2 at 12:00 PM : Feb 17, 2008

FACT CHECK: McCain is blowing the doors off in both Ohio and Texas. Real Clear Politics is hardly "liberal":

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/oh/ohio_republican_primary-262.html

Just keepin'' ''em honest.