Obama, Clinton would shuck Huckabee in general election

Why IS Huckabee still running?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Well, if the math mentioned in one of Holly's posts earlier today about Romney is roughly accurate, there is virtually no way he will get the nomination. He would need a complete landslide in every state left.

So no one buys Dobson's endorsement as changing anything? (Personally, I hope not but I'm not all that familiar with the numbers attached to such an endorsement.)

Sorry about the "no link" on the "this article" re: the endorsement! I fixed it.

Why is Huckabee still running... well for one thing he gets a kick out of being the #2 Republican Presidential candidate. He's come a long way in his life. So it's more of an emotional reason. But that's just one reason.

Huckabee may also be sticking around for the VP slot. Though I think McCain would do better with the FL guv. But if Huckabee proves he can deliver the religious vote, then just maybe McCain will choose him as the VP. After all in 8 years (assuming McCain gets to that point as Prez- and all those other necessary assumptions) Huckabee would be the presumptive Rep. nominee. Just think... McCain is the pres and Huckabee is his vice, then we could be looking at the next 8/16 years of a WH with a warmonger and religious conservative. I guess that means Iraq will become a Christian country.... (and yes, I am being flip at this point). In all seriousness, the Crusades DO come to mind, though...

I'm not a big fan of hers, but it's a shame that CT's Jodi Rell isn't being discussed - then, whether it's Clinton or Obama, the GOP would kind of neutralize any "firstness" that one ticket could claim over the other maybe?

Oh, and what happens to the Romney delegates? The state parties can allocate the delegates of a candidate whose campaign is suspended (I got that little nugget from CNN's snippet on Romney's departure). Even if Huckabee received all Romney delegates, he is still pretty far behind McCain. But he does start looking better (number-wise).

Re: one day Iraq will become a Christian country. What's wrong with that? It used to be a Christian country until the Muslims nearly wiped them out. I say it's time to let the pendulum swing the other way.

Haven't endorsements proved that they aren't that big a deal? Didn't Clinton win by 15% in Mass? The Kennedy's didn't swing that state to Obama.

What I really liked about those polls is it shows that Romney would have gotten beat just as bad as Huckabee. So no matter what the hard right says, McCain is the best answer this year to either Democrat candidate. Not that it is a lock either way but it will be competitive.

As for Huck, I think he is staying in to get VP or some other cabinet position. I do think Florida's gov would a really good VP but I think McCain needs either Romney or Huckabee to get the base more rallied for the election. That is of course unless Clinton wins, than I think he could put up anyone he wanted.

Huckabee is likeable but seems over his head somewhat and more importantly, has limited appeal. (The Religious Right is nowhere as large a fraction of the US electorate or population as often envisioned, and has no clout in excess of its size.)

Huck is probably staying in to get the VP slot or maybe even getting money on the side from the GOP leadership (while presenting himself as cash-poor) in order to spur the Religious Right to come out and vote Republican this year. Note that it's naive for him or anyone else to expect McCain to eventually choose him as the VP.

Note that Romney is not a "hard right" "conservative" and was transparent to everyone, hard right, not hard right alike. (Only the farther left thought he was some kind of conservative or even "ultra-conservative.") He actually had a kind of chance to do okay if he had caught on to people's concerns about the economy and tried to exploit it by presenting his business-world economic qualifications above or in lieu of everything else. Instead, we got a teevee news anchor from the most notorious liberal, Democratic alien place in the USA to non-libs (excluding DC, which is nearly off-scale, and which should never be a state itself) who was notorious for remolding himself from liberal to conservative, whom few believed.

1. Conservative comment about Dobson and Huckabee -- didn't even draw the high double digits into the hundreds of comments that were generated for so many Romney and McCain issues.

http://www.townhall.com/news/politics-elections...

2. The same is true, incidentally, about Bush supporting McCain.

http://www.townhall.com/news/politics-elections...

I think you are probably correct re: limited appeal but what I wonder about is, when people feel that they are facing a reality that they simply cannot live with (or think that they cannot live with), it's hard to know what they will do.

What will be truly funny is: as the general election approaches, Rush Limbaugh will go into predictable GOP party-hack mode. (I don't listen to AM righty talk shows much any more, and haven't for a few years, and one reason is that the format is standard, predictable, and sometimes unpleasantly so.) In the past he has been vicious toward McCain. Once McCain is nominated, I wonder how much Limbaugh will groan and then say things in favor of McCain. That is, versus his obvious party-hack avoidance opportunity (avoid praising McCain, that is), by just attacking the Democratic candidate rather than defending, much less praising, McCain.

To some extent that will also be the attitude of many who will hold their nose and vote for McCain rather than for the Dem. What many don't yet realize is that some of us may not hold our nose and vote for McCain, if we feel comfortable enough with a Dem named Obama.

I accept for rhetoric, I just don't get what people on the right see in Obama. Name an issue, that as a conservative you agree with.

Personally I wouldn't mind Obama with a Republican Congress but with a Democratic Majority and the possibility of 60 in Senate I just can't vote for him. I guess that's why I hope Clinton wins because I don't even have to think about not voting McCain.

BBQ: I'm not a conservative but I think I can name some issues conservatives would consider important (maybe not all conservatives). There may be some cross-over issues between liberals and conservatives, but if I accidentally name a "liberal only" position, someone please correct me.

Let's see... Obama talks about his faith, that should appeal to the evangelically inclined. Though Obama may support government programs that conservatives don't like. However remember Bush put through the big Medicaid prescription program for seniors which is usually the type of program Dems would support. Obama is for fighting poverty and would be much kinder to the environment- both issues which impact us all, but are generally seen as liberal issues. Though a lot of conservatives believe this is important.

Obama is for invading other countries, including Pakistan if there is actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden (as an example) is at a specific place and there is reason to believe the intelligence is true. Of course war is Bush's major accomplishment and the Republicans say that Dems are soft on terrorism. I think Obama's comments, which are out of the mainstream and go against the peace-niks prove that Obama does have a certain amount of strength. What's interesting is how little attention these comments have gotten. I think the left is hard-pressed to call Obama a warmonger (Obama is not a war monger but he wants to protect the country, a distinction few see, on either the left or right) and the right has been saying that Bush should have gone in and bombed the entire area, so the right can't call Obama a warmonger either. Imagine some conservative who supports Bush calling Obama a warmonger. And if you get right down to it, the war (and everything Bush has done in its name) is the only thing anyone conservative can support about Bush.

Then there are all those soldiers coming back from the war. Obama has sponsored legislation to improve care and try to keep soldiers from becoming homeless. I suppose this looks like liberal big government spending programs, but if the country (especially a war pushed by conservatives) want soldiers to risk body, limb and life then the country should take care of the needs to the returning soldiers. We see how well Bush funded Walter Reed- Obama wants to fully fund VA programs.

Hmmm... Obama is also for following the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. It seems that if one of the conservatives' goals is to fight terrorism, then we should implement the 9/11 commission reports. God only knows that the conservatives line up behind Bush whenever he says "XYZ is important to fight terrorism" even if nobody else in the world thought so.

I don't think this is on the conservative agenda.... but Obama will talk to hostile governments that are America's enemies. The only reason I bring it up is that Bush acts like a school yard bully and we see where that has gotten us. On the other hand all the presidents before Bush have generally (not always) kept lines of communication open with hostile governments. Think Reagan and the Soviet Union, our sworn mortal enemy. The Soviet Union is no more and its satellite states have split off to become independent countries once more. Wow, talk about spreading Democracy! It wouldn't have happened if Bush/Cheney were in office and threatened to invade them- their saber rattling would have made the Soviet Union stronger. Just like Bush's saber rattling toward Iran and N. Korea pushed them into anti-American pursuits (I think of Iran/N.Korea as having been on the fence before Bush, with manageable threats, but when Bush came to power he pushed them off the fence, like Humpty Dumpty).

Tax cuts: Obama has a tax cut plan for working people. It provides up to $500 in tax rebates to lower earning folks. Oh, sorry- I guess that's not a conservative issue since it's not a tax cut for the very wealthiest of Americans who have no problem buying food, clothing and shelter.

Well that's enough for now. Comments?