Mike Huckabee

The inscrutable Mike Huckabee has secured a book deal with Sentinel, the conservative imprint of Penguin Group USA that also recently acquired Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs.

From the announcement: "Governor Huckabee's book will lay out his optimistic vision for America's future and explain how the conservative movement can return to its principles, unify its factions, and take back America."

More on this later, maybe!

It's not a big surprise, but within minutes of the polls closing, Vermont has been called for Barack Obama and John McCain.

A deluge of polls on the day before the March 4 primaries shows mixed results:   read more »

Over the weekend, the first new episode of Saturday Night Live to air since the end of the writers’ strike posted the show’s highest ratings since Feb. 4, 2006, easily topping seven million viewers, Variety reports. SNL hadn’t broadcast since the fall, which made Saturday’s show—the first in four consecutive weeks of new SNL episodes—with Tina Fey as host (see above), guest appearances by Mike Huckabee (he was on Weekend Update, too) and Steve Martin (who, coincidentally, hosted the Feb. 4, 2006 episode), and a musical performance by Carrie Underwood, a highly anticipated event.  read more »

Chuck Norris isn’t the only celebrity who has stumped for Republican Mike Huckabee. Here’s a clip of rock group KB Gunn and the Boston Tea Party singing their support for the presidential hopeful from Arkansas. The tune, cleverly titled “The Huckabee Song,” rides high on harmonic intricacies that alone express a fiery passion for Mr. Huckabee’s unique platform of issues. Self-styled proponents of real change in the nation’s capital, Mr. Gunn and his invisible collective of New England-based herb flakes have crafted lyrics, too, which drive at the heart of Mr. Huckabee’s vision for America.

A song without sound is like a painting without a canvas or something, but here’s a little taste of the tune’s poetry. “The Huckabee Song” begins:

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

Though certainly sufficient, those aren’t the only reasons why KB Gunn and the Boston Tea Party want you to vote for Mr. Huckabee. “The home of the brave, the land of the free,” they sing, “needs a leader like Mike Hukabee.” Oh, and we almost forgot—“he wants to fix our country’s press” and “end the IRS.” But at the end of the day, don’t we all?

Mike Huckabee is coming to New York City on February 27. He may appear outside the city, too, for the right price: $30,000.

That's what Huckabee’s New York Chairman, M. Myers Mermel, says is needed to schedule each additional stop on Huckabee's visit here. In an email to supporters just now, Mermel wrote:  read more »

SOULED OUT: RECLAIMING FAITH & POLITICS AFTER THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Princeton University Press, 251 pages, $24.95

“I hope we can answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, proclaimed in 1998. Ten years later, Mr. Huckabee remains committed to a fundamentalist agenda on abortion, evolution school prayer and gay marriage. But his tone—and tactics—have changed.

He always gets asked “the God questions,” Mr. Huckabee complained to Liane Hansen of National Public Radio, when he’d rather be talking about public policy: “I was a governor ten and a half years and led in education, rebuilding our road system, health care [and] never really governed with a sense of religious fervor. I run for president and that’s all people want to talk about.”  read more »

The 2008 presidential election here in the United States is very important to the French. How important? “Too important," said Douglas Herbert, business editor with the TV news station France 24, "to be left to the American electorate to decide.”

In this, France is not alone. Across Europe, journalists and editors interviewed by The Observer say, people are coming down with the 2008 fever.  read more »

Though the Democratic nomination has yet to be decided, Barack Obama and John McCain have begun acting very much as if the general election has already started, exchanging direct criticisms and sizing each other up. And, while neither has talked publicly about it at this early stage, both men are doubtless pondering the running-mate question.

In a matchup with Obama, McCain would face two potentially conflicting imperatives with his choice of a vice presidential candidate.  read more »

There were 116 total delegates at stake in the Republican presidential race tonight, and John McCain has apparently won all of them—terrific news for a candidate who began the day about 400 delegates shy of the magic number needed to clinch the nomination.

And two of his primary wins were by convincing margins—in Maryland, where he led Mike Huckabee by a two-to-one margin, and in the District of Columbia, where he was the overwhelming choice of the approximately 4,000 voters who took Republican ballots.

And now the bad news: McCain got a serious scare in Virginia, finally pulling out a high single-digit victory after trailing Huckabee in the early returns. McCain had been the runaway leader—by about 30 points—in polls taken just last week in Virginia.  read more »

Imagine that you’ve somehow found yourself on trial, mistakenly accused of some criminal act that you would never even think about committing. A guilty verdict will destroy your good name and send you away to a very bad place.

When the trial opens, the eager prosecutor lays out the case, an avalanche of seemingly damning—but, in actuality, entirely circumstantial—evidence. You stew at the defense table, aching for a chance to respond.

But before your moment arrives, the 12 jurors decide they’ve heard enough. With the trial still ongoing, they each cast early “guilty” verdicts. When you finally take the stand and prove—like a scene out of Matlock—that you’ve been wrongly accused, the jurors are all far away from the courtroom, back at their jobs or maybe just lounging around at home. You lose.  read more »

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—John McCain just rounded off his victory speech here by cheekily appropriating one of Barack Obama's signature lines.

"I promise you I am fired up and ready to go," he told a cheering crowd.

The Arizona senator's speech seemed to target Obama more than Clinton, in yet another sign of the shifting dynamics of the Democratic race.

At one point he suggested that Obama's candidacy offered "not a promise of hope but a platitude."  read more »

Signs point to a very long night for Hillary Clinton. Polls are still open in Maryland and in the District of Columbia, but they have just closed in Virginia—and news outlets have already declared Barack Obama the winner by a wide margin.

Virginia was Clinton's best chance of scoring an upset victory, or at least keeping the race close enough to declare a moral victory. If she has lost lopsidedly in Virginia, it points to even worse defeats for her in Maryland and D.C.  read more »

Yummmm…What’s that delicious smell? Oh, my stars—it’s the “Chuck 4 Huck” Barbeque, of course!

In this promo clip for Republican Mike Huckabee, actor Chuck Norris, enunciating and gesticulating like he’s speaking to a mature golden retriever, invites viewers to join his Internet cookout party for the presidential hopeful and former governor of Arkansas. During the political party, Mr. Norris says he plans to—wait for it, wait for it—take guests on a virtual tour of his Texas ranch! For anyone still on the fence, the 67-year-old former Walker star, a nasty martial artist, surely seals the deal by promising to show off “the workout area where I train.” There won’t be any dessert, because it’s hard to serve dessert over the Web. BUT! “My black belts are going to give a demonstration,” Mr. Norris says.

Here’s what’s at stake in today's primary contests:

Democrats

Barack Obama is supposed to go three-for-three on the day. Short of engineering an upset victory—which would represent a campaign-changing development—Hillary Clinton’s best hope lies in containing her opponent’s victory margins and keeping the delegate race close, possibly positioning her to declare some kind of moral victory. On the heels of her weekend drubbings—and the news that she is replacing her campaign manager—the risk for Clinton tomorrow is obvious: Three more unspinnably lopsided defeats could create the impression that her campaign is in a tailspin, and that Obama is beginning to pull away.

Maryland:  read more »

The McCain campaign just announced that Gary Bauer has endorsed John McCain. Bauer is the onetime president of the Family Research Council, founder of the Campaign for Working Families PAC, former presidential candidate, and an enthusiastic supporter of traditional marriage and turning over Roe v. Wade.

His endorsement should help soothe some of the conservative rebellion against what seems like McCain’s inevitable path to the Republican presidential nomination. It also seems like a bit of a blow to Mike Huckabee, whose wins this weekend were a sign of support from social conservatives. Huckabee had just earned the endorsement of James Dobson.

Release after the jump.  read more »

Mike Huckabee's overpowering win in the Kansas caucuses equips him with a useful weapon to beat back calls for his immediate departure from the Republican race, but it won't do anything to reverse John McCain's overall inevitability.

Trouncing McCain in lightly-attended caucuses in a state where conservative Christians hold disproportionate sway simply represents a continuation of the pattern that has defined this G.O.P. race. Huckabee does exceedingly well in states like Kansas and Iowa and across the South, but remains incapable of making inroads in the rest of the country. With McCain only about 450 delegates shy of the Republican nomination, there are simply too many non-Southern, non-Christian conservative-dominated states left for Huckabee—or anyone else—to catch him.  read more »

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination is on, with the two early leaders—Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee—using this year’s campaign, in very different ways, to position themselves for what many in the party privately believe will be an open nomination.

Granted, it’s somewhat premature to discuss the 2012 race when John McCain, who is now the presumptive nominee, actually leads Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (slightly) in some polls. If McCain wins in the fall (and seeks a second term at age 76) then there probably won’t be any room for Romney or Huckabee or anyone else four years from now.

But the same was true back in 1996, when Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes came up short in the primaries and immediately started laying the groundwork for follow-up bids in 2000—even while publicly professing that they expected Bob Dole to be running for reelection that year.

Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee are well aware of the G.O.P.’s tendency to nominate the candidate whose “turn” it is, a pattern that—in a very roundabout way—has reaffirmed itself with the success of Mr. McCain, the second-place candidate from the last open Republican contest. In fact, George W. Bush is the only non-incumbent Republican since Barry Goldwater to win the presidential nomination on his first try.

And with Mr. McCain emerging as the nominee and quite possibly facing defeat in the fall, the race between Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney seems to be on to play the next-in-line role in 2012.

There was no accident in the setting Mitt Romney chose to end his 2008 presidential bid. In front of some of the right’s truest believers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he presented his withdrawal as a patriotic act of self-sacrifice, sparing his party a protracted nomination fight and freeing Republicans to unite against the Democrats and “a surrender to terror.”

He might just as well have announced his ‘12 candidacy on the spot. The CPAC attendees represent the conservative activists who Mr. Romney tried mightily to unite behind his candidacy this year. He had some success, but not quite enough. Now he has four years to try again.

More after the jump.  read more »

Mitt Romney just withdrew from the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries—he won the states he has lived in and a series of not particularly contested caucuses.

In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Romney noted that he "hates to lose" but is withdrawing because "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win."

He also said, "we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!!"

Full text of the speech after the jump.  read more »

Mark Halperin is reporting that Romney will drop out of the race, possibly making his announcement at Conservative Political Action Conference today.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Romney will suspend his campaign.

Following John McCain’s victory in Florida last week the chorus of McCain-hatred grew louder on talk radio shows and on many conservative blogs.

Rush Limbaugh declared that McCain was not conservative and unacceptable as a candidate. Formerly respectable conservative figures took delight in criticizing McCain’s war record—yes, his war record—by tallying up the number of planes he had lost in combat. Ann Coulter and James Dobson, a social conservative leader and head of the Focus on the Family organization, declared McCain so indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, the featured villainess in any conservative drama, that they would vote for her or stay home.

In short the McCain villifiers doubled down on their bet that they could derail McCain and lift their favored alternative, Mitt Romney, to victory.  read more »

Each of the Republicans can claim some kind of victory tonight, but the big winner is clearly John McCain-–with a major assist from Mike Huckabee.

John McCain won the most delegates today, with a tally that could reach as high as 600, depending on how California shakes out (it has more than half of the number needed to clinch the nomination). McCain did win the most states, but his delegate total was additionally padded by victories in some large winner-take-all states, like New York and New Jersey. He can also claim a win in the South (Oklahoma), along with a string of close second-place finishes in that region (which netted him a bundle of delegates, since those states award their delegates proportionally). His California victory makes for a powerful statement for the kind of day he had.  read more »

With tallies still outstanding from California and a few other states, NBC has Barack Obama leading the day's pledged delegate county, 594-546. (Slightly closer than the Obama campaign’s reported estimate.)

On the Republican side, the numbers are less clear, but NBC is predicting that John McCain will receive between 400 and 600 today, while Mitt Romney will grab between 150 and 400, and Mike Huckabee will finish with about 200.

As a fuller picture of the results in Southern states emerges, it now appears that Mike Huckabee has undermined Mitt Romney's campaign. Romney, whose last-ditch strategy involves trying to rally the party's conservative base around him in opposition to John McCain and his supposed crimes against conservatism, badly needs a handful of wins in states like Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri -- places where his new message should most resonate. But Huckabee's regional and cultural appeal in those states threatened to steal the voters that Romney is targeting.  read more »

That Barack Obama has won Georgia is no surprise. That he apparently has won it by such a large margin -- perhaps exceeding 70 percent of the statewide vote, if early reports are true -- is a shock, and could portend trouble for Hillary Clinton nationwide tonight. Georgia's Democratic electorate, like South Carolina's, is about 50 percent black, and Obama has apparently won this constituency overwhelmingly.  read more »

Another example of the enduring John McCain-Mike Huckabee alliance and its consequences for Mitt Romney: Huckabee just won the West Virginia State Republican Convention thanks to an assist from McCain.

Romney targeted West Virginia, where a vote of the 1,100 delegates at the state G.O.P. convention determines which presidential candidate will receive all 18 of West Virginia's delegates to the national convention.

More after the jump.  read more »

One of the less-discussed Super Tuesday contests is the West Virginia Republican Convention.

It's already been called, and all delegates at stake have gone to Mike Huckabee, after supporters of Ron Paul and John McCain (whose support was trailing) defected to the former Arkansas governor.

Mitt Romney, Huckabee and Paul all addressed the convention before voting began.

More from AP.

Democrats

Barack Obama:

At a minimum, Obama needs to keep the overall delegate count relatively close, so that even if he falls behind Hillary, he won’t be in a position where he needs to sweep the rest of the primaries and caucuses to catch up. Even though delegates are given out proportionally at the district level, Obama also needs to win multiple states in different regions to make a statement about his national viability.  read more »

When John McCain and Mike Huckabee forged an informal alliance just before the Iowa caucuses, skeptics called it a fleeting marriage of convenience.

With an assist from McCain, Huckabee would fend off Mitt Romney in Iowa, thereby wounding Romney and creating an opening for McCain in New Hampshire. Then, with Romney marginalized, McCain and Huckabee would call off their truce and tear into each other in a one-on-one battle for the nomination.

That’s not quite how it’s worked out, though.  read more »

Believe it or not, Mike Huckabee has a New York State campaign. And believe it or not, someone has actually volunteered to run it.

Meet M. Myers Mermel. The "M" stands for Mark, but he goes by Myers, his mother's maiden name. The Myers family, he told me, were poor farmers in Indiana. "They weren't rich, but had a lot of integrity," Mermel said.

He took Myers as his first name because, he says, "When people talk to me, I want them to know who I am."  read more »

Let’s start by stipulating the obvious: Mitt Romney is absolutely correct when he complains—as he did repeatedly throughout last night’s final pre-Super Tuesday Republican debate—that John McCain has intentionally and maliciously misrepresented Romney’s publicly stated views on the Iraq war.

It was in the closing days of the Florida campaign that McCain threw Romney on the defensive with charges that the former Massachusetts governor had favored a troop withdrawal—or “surrender,” as McCain prefers—last year at this time.

This was an utterly flimsy assertion, if for no other reason than this: Romney’s entire campaign has been premised on cozying up to the conservative base, even if it means reversing positions and attitudes that he’d held for years. Splitting with a Republican White House—and the party base—over a matter of war in the early days of a primary campaign was never in his playbook.

But as the Florida results showed, McCain's was also a highly effective tactic, one that Romney protested furiously when the two met in California for last night’s debate.

“Raising it a few days before the Florida primary, when there was very little time for me to correct the record…sort of falls in the kind of dirty tricks that I think Ronald Reagan would have found to be reprehensible,” Romney harrumphed last night with McCain sitting just a few inches to his right.  read more »

Rudy Giuliani’s former rivals are already pouncing on his donors.

Barron Thomas says that in the last day, he has received calls from the Huckabee, McCain and Romney camps, seeking his money, and the money of his many friends.

He says that he’s still undecided and told me, “I picked Rudy because I thought he was the best candidate.”  read more »

Here are some excerpts from John McCain's speech after his victory in the Florida Republican primary tonight, as prepared for delivery.

On Florida:

I have always loved this beautiful state, from the time I was a young naval aviator learning my trade in Pensacola to the time I commanded the largest air squadron in the United States Navy at Cecil Field. Most of all, I have always been indebted to Florida friends and neighbors in Orange Park for taking such good care of my family while I was away on a longer than expected tour of duty. Florida has always been a special place to me, and it is all the more so tonight.

On his opponents:

I offer my best wishes to Governor Romney and his supporters. You fought hard for your candidate, and the margin that separated us tonight surely isn't big enough for me to brag about or for you to despair. Governor Huckabee and his supporters, as always, brought to this campaign conviction and passion and something we don't always have enough of in these contests, good humor and grace. And I want to thank, my dear friend, Rudy Giuliani, who invested his heart and soul in this primary, and who conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is.

More after the jump.  read more »

Mitt Romney has become this year's answer to Mo Udall, the Democrat who tried and tried and tried to breakthrough in the 1976 primaries but always came up just a few inches short.

Romney has had chances to claim the momentum in the Republican race in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and now in Florida. He has done well in each of them, but—like with Udall 32 years ago—never well enough to claim victory. To date, Romney's only win (not counting his uncontested and largely meaningless victories in Wyoming and Nevada) came in Michigan, where his family name and native son status yielded an easily dismissed triumph over John McCain.

Meanwhile, McCain has scored outright victories in three fiercely contested primaries: New Hampshire, South Carolina, and now Florida. By winning Florida, where independents are barred from the G.O.P. primary, McCain has demonstrated that he can succeed even without what is perceived as his political base, and can now be declared the clear front-runner on the Republican side.

The Republican race will now move quickly. In seven nights, 22 states will hold primaries and caucuses, an opportunity for McCain to deliver a knockout punch to Romney, whose relatively narrow defeat tonight will allow him to press ahead with his campaign.  read more »

Here’s what’s at stake for the candidates in today’s Florida primary:

Republicans

John McCain: A win, even if it’s by a nose, will give the media license to declare him the clear national front-runner and should send much of the Republican rank-and-file, however reluctantly, into his camp, positioning him for a decisive string of victories on Super Tuesday. Because of Florida’s closed primary, a McCain victory—unlike his New Hampshire and South Carolina wins—will not be chalked up to his support from non-Republicans and will be treated by the press as a signal from the party base that, after spurning him for nearly a decade, they are ready to close rank behind McCain.  read more »

Last night was a very good night for Mitt Romney at the Republican debate in Boca Raton. It was a solid showing for John McCain, a surprisingly good performance by Mike Huckabee, and a pretty rotten one by Rudy Giuliani.

Romney gave what was probably his best debate performance of the entire campaign, a showing that could bolster his standing in Florida, where he and McCain are vying for the lead as they head into the January 29 primary.

The former Massachusetts governor stood out because he was finally able to escape from topics that call attention to the opportunism that has defined his campaign efforts in previous states. Instead of trying to out-conservative his foes on abortion, immigration, and gay rights—hot-button social issues on which Romney sang a remarkably different tune prior to his re-christening as a Republican presidential candidate—he focused much of his airtime on economic topics, speaking with a confidence and authenticity that is notably absent when he ventures into cultural issues.  read more »

Officially, victory in Michigan belongs to Mitt Romney. But for all practical purposes, tonight’s result is a win for every candidate in the race not named John McCain.

McCain came into Michigan in the same position Romney was two weeks ago. Back then, Romney was poised to score lead-off victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire, a one-two punch that would have sent the G.O.P.’s establishment masses—voters who have mixed feelings about all of the candidates and who have been content to wait for one to claim the mantle of inevitability—rushing into his camp, while marginalizing his opponents. But then Romney fell short in those states, and McCain inherited is spot as the would be-inevitable candidate.

The combination of Romney’s twin losses and McCain’s New Hampshire victory sent McCain’s poll numbers soaring, both in the next wave of primary states and in national polls. The Republican rank-and-file seemed to be signaling its willingness to rally behind him if he could maintain his momentum. That is why Michigan was so crucial to him: A win would have eliminated Romney and made follow-up McCain wins in South Carolina, Florida and in the big states on February 5 even more likely.

More after the jump.  read more »

It’s true that this year’s Republican presidential race is the most fluid on record. At varying points, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee have all seemed to be plausible front-runners.

But by Tuesday night, after the results from what is only the third major contest of the nominating season are tallied, the race may be close to over—or it will be more jumbled than ever.  read more »