Huckabee: "Rough Inning" Won't Prevent Win
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI -- In from the wind and snow, Mike Huckabee entered a sweaty room packed with hundreds of supporters wearing beads and toting homemade signs. Preliminary results showed him just behind Rudy Giuliani in fourth place in the Florida primary.
"For those of you who think we should be discouraged, let me just remind you that going into tonight, we were second in delegate count," said Huckabee. "We're playing all 9 innings of this ball game. Even the [St. Louis] Cardinals, occasionally, have a rough inning. But they know how to win championships."
Huckabee listed the Feb. 5 states he hoped to win next week: Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia.
"We're going to have a great opportunity to take it all the way home to the nomination and to the White House."
He thanked his state co-chairs and the "up to 300,000 volunteers who worked their hearts out" for his campaign in Florida.
"They had no resources. Others have spent millions and millions of dollars. We knew we that wouldn't have those kind of resources to play there. So we went out there and just worked with people who would come out, put their own signs out, but their own t-shirts and hats. Lady in Pensacola: she and her daughter put up 700 signs, just the two of them in one day. Unbelievable."
Huckabee said, "if you look at what we have done with what we have, it's a remarkable story that is not even close to being over. In fact, we'd like to believe we're just really getting started."
Huckabee emphasized the importance of his "volunteer army" in efforting wins on Feb. 5. He wished out loud that he had "cooked food" for the crowd, who had waited with empty stomachs for his arrival.
"Fried chicken!" someone yelled.
"Fried chicken? I gave it up a few years ago," said Huckabee. "But I do know how to eat it if I get it," he said for the second time today alluding to Romney's skinless fried chicken eating habit.
As if one of the candidates would not be at the debate tomorrow either because of weather or because he had pulled out of the race, he said, "I'm going to be on that stage tomorrow night. I'm not sure everybody is going to be there, but I will be."
And then, because of the inclement wind and snow, off Huckabee went for California.