Conventinal wisdom says that Mike Huckabee has hurt Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. The notion is that Huck denies Romney the votes of true conservatives.
But tonight, MSNBC polling shows that among evangelical Protestants, a core constituent group among Republicans, the vote was roughly evenly split among Romney, Huckabee, and John McCain, each polling about 30%.
One clear conclusion of these results is that evangelicals, though conservative, cannot be regarded as a monlith.
And, more broadly, that means that it has been highly presumptuous for the Romney people to say that, were it not for Mike Huckabee’s bothersome candidacy, he would be the natural recipient of the votes of true conservatives.
The Huckabee campaign could, with credibility, argue that it is Romney who should make way for the former Arkansas governor. Unlike Romney, Huckabee has always been pro-life and always favored to a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman for life. Romney’s bona fides as a conservative are clearly questionable, at best.
But, in spite of his suggestion that the Constitution be amended to conform to the Bible, Huckabee’s votes in the Bible Belt, where frontrunner John McCain has not been as strong–except in South Carolina, estabishes him as the frontrunner to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
After Super Tuesday, what I argued here, that the likeliest Republican ticket would be either McCain-Huckabee or Huckabee-McCain, seems even likelier.
What is clear is that, unless Romney pulls off a miracle in California tonight, Republicans who don’t like McCain will at least privately argue that the former Massachusetts governor should withdraw to make way for a conservative, Mike Huckabee.
[This is being cross-posted on my personal blog.]