The atheist and liberal blogosphere has been having a field day lately with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Consequently, I shied away from writing about Huckabee, because I did not feel I had anything original to contribute.
With his failure to beat Senator John McCain in the South Carolina primary, a state with a large number of evangelical voters, I think it is safe to say that Mike Huckabee's candidacy is now on the fast track to irrelevancy. His victory in Iowa was a flash in the pan and he has not won a single state since then. So much for "God's Army"!
It looks increasingly likely that in the coming weeks, the contest for the Republican nomination will be between McCain and Mitt Romney.
UPDATE: In the wake of Huckabee's defeat in the South Carolina primary, his campaign is having difficulty raising more funds, as reported in this article in the Los Angeles Times (login necessary).
Here's an excerpt:
On the heels of a crucial loss in the South Carolina Republican primary, Mike Huckabee acknowledged Tuesday that he had cut back his campaign operation in Florida, which holds its primary Tuesday.
At least one person was fired, and other aides quit, according to people with the campaign. Several senior staffers have volunteered to work without pay.
"Right now we're replenishing our coffers," said Bob Wickers, Huckabee's media consultant."It's just a bottomless pit in Florida," he added, referring to the high cost of TV ads.
Wickers acknowledged that Huckabee's loss in South Carolina on Saturday had made it more difficult to raise money.
The financial disarray comes a week before the closely fought Republican primary in Florida, a large state that poses logistical problems for any candidate.
The state can't be covered with campaign rallies alone, and a 10-day cycle of TV ads in Florida can cost as much as $2 million. Even with the staff reductions, the campaign can't afford network TV advertising rates and will instead concentrate on cable TV, Wickers said.
16 comments:
I'ld say it's very important to see how the voters were fooled, how they were pandered and lied to;
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Sorry but if you look at Huckabee's total vote and Thompson's total vote that is the evangelical vote of South Carolina. What you had is the evangelical vote splitting between two candidates. Now you have Fred on the path to irrevelancy and more Southern States coming up taht Huckabee will do well in because Thompson won;t be there to split the vote.
I have mixed emotions on this. Part of me thinks, "Yahoo, the yahoo lost." Part of me thinks, "Shucky-darn. If the Huckster won the Republican nomination, it might bring down the unholy triple alliance (money, war and god republicans)." I can only hope that, should McCain get the nomination, the christian right will remember that McCain called them (I don't remember the exact words, so I paraphrase) "Wing-nut authoritarians."
I think it's too early to tell yet. Yes, Huckabee lost to McCain, but not by much and he probably carried most of the fundie vote. I think we have to get past super tuesday on Feb 5, before we can write him off completely.
Thanks all.
I certainly don't claim to be infallible on such things. But I think Huckabee needed to win, and win big, in South Carolina. He might pick up one or two Bible belt states, but I think losing South Carolina is fatal to his campaign.
Like Billy, I have mixed feelings on this. The Huckster is quite obviously a dangerous theocrat, and seeing him lose does restore some of my confidence in the America people. At the same time, I suppose a Huck victory could have led the Republican party to implode.
I don't see how anon#1 came to the conclusion that Thompson and Huckster split the evangelical vote. If anything Thompson is not an evangelical and often rumored to be a non believer.
It is starting to feel like McCain will start getting major traction. Still, it's a pretty wide-open year for the GOP and and I agree with those who are "wait and see". McCain would certainly be the most difficult Republican to beat so maybe we should wish for the Huckleberry. Then again, if somehow he got elected - yikes...
It was a big blow indeed - however, I wouldn't be so quick to write him off. You don't win the nomination by getting the most votes, you get the nomination by getting the most delegates - and so far - this is how it looks.
Romney 59, Huckabee 40, and Mccain 36.
We can only hope....
And if Romney gets the Republican nomination? Is that good or bad for the Party's ability to hold itself together?
Who knows Anon?
How does a McCain/Romney ticket sound to you? At McCain's age, should he win, he could at best serve one term, which means his VP gets a leg up as the Republican frontrunner in 2012, assuming the country hasn't gone to shit by then.
McCain winning SC (my adopted home state for the time being) is pretty ironic, considering the whole "OMG! McCain has black babies!" fiasco that went down a few years back.
The only good thing I can take from the Pres primaries thus far is that the Republicans (and the asshole evangelicals) don't have a rock-solid candidate to back. I figured that the religious morons would back Huck like they backed Dubya in '00 and '04 but, thank Baal, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Of course, Mitt "the Stormin' Mormon" Romney has now emerged as somewhat of a front runner (having won a few states thus far), so we have to take the bad with the good...
Hey Rev. The fundies are backing Huck. The problem is, Huckabee makes the business wing of the Republican Party very uncomfortable. The fundies are supposed to be a constituency to be courted and thrown a few bones. The business class doesn't want them to actually assert leadership.
Bush was a candidate who was able to appeal to both the evangelicals and the Wall Street wing of the party. Huckabee can't bridge that divide.
Huckabee is history. He may as well throw in the towel...praise jeebus.
How cool is this? For the first time I'm at an age where I can understand politics and I'm very interested, and I can't tell how warped my perspective is, but this is the most interesting election in my opinion. I can't figure out if I've missed important details about past elections, but there's a Mormon and two candidates that aren't old white men. Still with the freak-show in place, I know more about Huckabee's platform than any other. I just can't look away, and I have evil fantasies about what it would be like if he were elected.
I really enjoyed vjack's comment. It's good that they are getting more of the popular vote swinging toward implosion. At least it's better than staying strong and steady.
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