-
To Mike Huckabee’s half-congratulations of Obama:
So, I say with sincerity that I have great respect for Senator Obama's historic achievement to become his party's nominee—not because of his color, but with indifference to it. Party or politics aside, we celebrate this milestone because it elevates our country.
A resounding "meh."
-
Mike Huckabee’s penchant for dark humor was a minor obsession of ours back when he was still in the race. So it’s good to see he’s still making people uncomfortable. Look what he just told an audience of NRA members after hearing an offstage noise:
"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak," said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."
Maybe Huckabee didn’t get the memo, but assassination jokes aren’t exactly kosher right now. (Not that they ever are, but Obama supporters voice legitimate concern.) It also highlights another reason why Huckabee isn’t a serious vice-presidential pick. Combine his loose lips with the Obama campaign’s umbrage hair trigger and a gaffe-hungry media, and we’d have quips like this splashed across Drudge every week.
-
Mike Huckabee, who wants you to know he’s still in the race, has challenged John McCain to a debate.
Here's something for them to debate. Be it resolved that:
994 (McCain's current delegate count) + 88 (Ohio) + 140 (Texas) + 20 (Rhode Island) + 17 (Vermont) > 1,191 (the number of delegates necessary to win the nomination)
Similarly:
239 (Huckabee’s current delegate count) + 88 (Ohio) + 140 (Texas) + 20 (Rhode Island) + 17 (Vermont) + 39 (Mississippi) + 9 (Virgin Islands) + 74 (Pennsylvania) + 57 (Indiana) + 69 (North Carolina) + 20 (Hawaii) + 45 (Kentucky) + 30 (Oregon) + 32 (Idaho) + 32 (New Mexico) + 27 (South Dakota) + 33 (Nebraska) < 1,191
Miracles, indeed.
Delegate numbers lifted from CNN and the New York Times.
-
John McCain has won yet another primary, this time in Wisconsin, which puts him ever closer to officially surpassing the number of delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination. He once again beat the quixotic Mike Huckabee, who Republicans (and sometimes McCain) have started to regard as a nuisance. But that’s a foolish mistake—he’s actually helping McCain.
With every McCain win, the Republican race has an excuse to butt in to cable news’ wall-to-wall coverage of the much-more-intriguing Democratic race. If Huckabee were to drop out, McCain’s victories would be completely empty—and completely unnewsworthy. McCain’s continued triumphs over Huckabee make him look like a winner, which fits into his own personality as a fighter and his campaign’s message that he can beat the Democrat in November and win the war on terror. (That Huckabee is always termed as the “insurgent candidate” is the cherry on top.)
As McCain has evolved into his party’s leader, Huckabee has morphed into the party’s gadfly. As he draws blood from the Republican base, he’s making McCain’s weaknesses explicit, which allows the entire party to rally and heal the wounds. If there’s any time for McCain to address his weaknesses, it’s now, while the Democrats continue to squabble over superdelegates and plagiarism. Plus, McCain is insulated from any real harm since he has the nomination and the party establishment wrapped up. He's like a Republican Bubble Boy.
Huckabee has often said he’ll continue to soak up the social conservative vote until McCain reaches the magic delegate number of 1,191. While it happens, McCain should be soaking in the wins.
-
For a good half-hour there, John McCain’s campaign was having a coronary. Virginia was teetering between their candidate and Mike Huckabee. When it tipped, the state—and its 60 winner-take-all delegates—went to McCain. He ended up with 50 percent to Huckabee’s 41 percent. But it was close enough that McCain can’t exactly claim the party is rallying around him. Some showing for the party’s presumptive nominee.
Huckabee, on the other hand, isn't just alive. He has all but sucked the life out of Mitt Romney’s desiccated campaign and used it to reanimate his own. Early exits showed evangelicals favoring Huck over McCain by a whopping 40 points. He beat McCain handily in the South and the Shenandoah Valley. Without Romney to split evangelicals and social conservatives, Huckabee appears to have lapped them all up.
This doesn’t change the fact that John McCain will be the party’s nominee. After picking up most of the 113 delegates at stake today, he will wake up tomorrow beating Huckabee by at least 500 delegates and closing in on the 1,191 needed for the nomination. (See up-to-date numbers here.) His relatively narrow victory reflects the deep uneasiness many Republican voters still feel toward him, even now that he’s been essentially declared the nominee.
Keep in mind that the state’s circumstances favored Huck. In an open primary like Virginia’s, Obama no doubt sucked independents away from McCain. Plus, many moderate Republicans probably think of the race as settled, and therefore didn’t turn out for McCain. Huckabee fans, on the other hand, know he can still use their help. Nevertheless, for all McCain’s appeals to conservative unity, he doesn’t seem to be getting through.
So what’s in it for Huckabee? Shouldn’t he realize that the longer he stays in the race, the more he undermines the mandate of the party’s inevitable nominee? Doesn’t he realize that McCain has him beaten on the board? Perhaps. But for Huckabee, it’s not about the numbers. “I didn’t major in math,” he has been saying. “I majored in miracles.” But unless he can miraculously turn back time and stop Fred Thompson from entering the race, or alter the GOP’s winner-take-all primary system, or call down a lightning bolt upon John McCain’s head, he’s going to be disappointed.
More likely, Huckabee will drop out once he feels he has made his point—but before he has ticked off McCain. So far, he has managed to maintain friendly relations with his opponent. But that will become harder and harder if Huckabee appears to be undermining McCain’s candidacy with his presence. Who knows, maybe McCain will offer him the vice presidency just to get him off his back.
-
Another Tuesday has arrived, which means we get to spend another night watching results crawl across cable news tickers. Before you snuggle up in front of the fireplace with Wolf, Matthews, or Brit, here are some things to keep an eye on.
Can Hillary win a single congressional district? At this point, you’re tired of everybody telling you the Democrats assign their delegates proportionally, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t say it again—Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. assign their delegates proportionally statewide and by congressional district. According to a recent poll, Clinton is going to lose both states' overall votes and is only within striking distance in two Maryland congressional districts (on the east by the bay) and one Virginia district (in the D.C. metro area). The two Maryland districts have an odd number of delegates up for grabs, which means somebody will walk away with a one-delegate advantage.
How will Washington, D.C.’s two districts differ? Since Washington D.C. is a (meaningless) congressional district in and of itself, its delegate assignments are roughly split into East D.C. and West D.C., which also means it's split along socioeconomic and demographic lines. Obama’s lead in the East is larger because of a larger African-American population. The West, meanwhile, is whiter.
If Obama wins in all three contests, will he have proven he can win a primary? The knock on Obama’s recent winning streak is that it has included too many caucuses. If he wins two medium-to-large-sized states tonight, will that make the criticism evaporate? It's doubtful, especially considering his flubs in Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey. But wins in Virginia and Maryland will give the Obama campaign some ammo to refute Clinton’s caucuses-don’t-count-as-much attack.
Can John McCain make serious inroads among evangelical voters? These three contests should get Mike Huckabee off McCain’s back. But Huckabee is unlikely to drop out of the race as long as his core base of evangelical voters continues to rally around him instead of around McCain. At least one poll showed McCain narrowly leading Huckabee among evangelical voters, but even a close second will be enough to impress.
What’s the margin of victory? It’s not about who wins and who loses anymore. Now everything revolves around the margin of defeat. If Obama emerges from tonight with only a 20-delegate haul, consider it a disappointment. The poll mentioned earlier puts his projected total in the low 30s. Thirty-five delegates or more and his night is a rousing success, even though the Obama campaign only assumed a nine-delegate advantage from the three states originally.
-
It looks like Mike Huckabee is probably going to win in Louisiana—but it won't count. Despite clear evidence that the state prefers Mike Huckabee over John McCain, no delegates will be awarded based on this primary. That's because of a silly rule that the Republican primary results only impact the state's delegate allotment if the winner gets more than 50 percent of the vote. Instead, the delegates will be based on a late-January caucus that barely anyone cared about. To make things even more confusing, the "winner" of the caucus wasn't a candidate—it was a "pro-life uncommitted" slate. That means those state delegates can pick John McCain or Mike Huckabee at the state convention. From there, the national delegates will be selected.
Confused? Check out our previous post on the Louisiana caucus. A choice excerpt to whet your arbitrary-democracy appetite:
But here's the thing—their Tuesday night vote didn't actually select a nominee. The 10,000-plus people merely chose delegates for the state convention—and the winning delegate body didn't even represent a specific candidate. "Pro-life uncommitted" won the Louisiana state caucuses, which means every Republican besides Rudy Giuliani has a chance of getting those delegates because the delegates will remain uncommitted until the state convention later this year. At the state convention, a select number of delegates will be chosen to go to the national convention to represent Louisiana. They'll have to commit to a candidate before they do that.
-
John McCain is going to stop Mike Huckabee from winning the nomination, but he can't stop him from winning Kansas. Huckabee won 60 percent of the vote, more than twice the number of votes as Mr. Nominee-to-Be. He'll get 39 delegates, an ego boost, and an excuse to stick around a little longer. Hooray for Huck.
More importantly, about 17,000 fewer people turned out for the Republican caucuses than the Democratic caucuses earlier this week. That's a small margin in a multimillion-vote state, but not in Kansas. Both of the caucuses were closed, so the 17,000 gap implies nearly twice as many true Democrats caucused as true Republicans. In 2004, nearly twice as many Kansans voted for George Bush than for John Kerry.
Granted, the Republican race is Nanook of the North to the Democrats' Transformers. Plus, the governor of Kansas is a vocal Barack Obama supporter, which may have stimulated turnout for the Democrats (Obama won 74 percent of the vote). But if even Kansas is more excited about Barack Obama than John McCain, all of the Republicans-are-unexcited nightmare scenarios could come true. Once again, we may be asking ourselves, What's the Matter With Kansas?
Note: For those unaware, the slightly risque headline owes its heritage to Arrested Development.
-
Mitt Romney is pulling out of the Republican race today, most likely after realizing he was mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination. Rather than pray for a brokered convention that turns to him as the party's savior, he's pulling out now while he still has enough dignity in the tank for a 2012 run.
Romney's withdrawal (which is technically a "suspension" of his campaign) means it's down to Mac and Mike. Yes, the two candidates least likely to win the Republican nomination five months ago are now the only two candidates (besides Ron Paul) left standing. For the full effect, we're going to write it one more time: Aw-shucks Huck has stayed in the Republican race longer than moneybags-Mitt.
For weeks, Huckabee has said it's a two-man race—between him and John McCain. Since Iowa, pundits have said that Huckabee was the one draining Romney's votes, but now the chattering class is left with a new question: Was Romney draining Huckabee's votes?
Doubtful. Huckabee won't pick up Romney's fiscal conservative vote thanks to his fair tax plan, and all of Romney's anti-radical-jihad fans are going to flock to McCain. He could scavenge Romney's social conservative bloc, but there probably aren't enough of them to put Huckabee over the top to beat McCain.
McCain will still be the nominee, but Romney's withdrawal will allow Huckabee to make some noise. In the coming weeks, Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, and Ohio all become especially friendly to Huckabee. That, of course, assumes Huckabee is going to stay in the race, even though he can't mathematically win, either. Last we heard, Huckabee said he was going to stay in until somebody had a majority of delegates. Then again, the last we heard from Romney, he said he was staying in through the convention. Consider it his final flip-flop.
-
Mike Huckabee, responding to a question about why he's still in the race if he won't win the nomination:
"I'm not sure I would say it's so unlikely that we'll get the nomination. No one's got 1,191 delegates yet, and until they do, we're still in it. Nobody thought the New York Giants were gonna be the Super Bowl champions, and everybody had those hats painted up [sic] with the Patriots. Guess what, those are a real bargain today. You can get a lot of Super Bowl hats with the Patriots insignia on it, for a deal. So don't be too quick to say it's over."
So after Huckabee loses, is he going to send
his campaign T-shirts to children in Africa?
-
As you’ll no doubt be reading in, oh, five seconds, the day belongs to John McCain. But Mike Huckabee has now won West Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama—a clean sweep of the Southern states. We knew he was strong in these primaries, but damn.
That’s a total of at least 94 winner-take-all delegates plus a piece of the states’ proportionally allocated delegates. Overall, he should take away more than 120 delegates. Not bad for a guy who hasn’t added a notch to his belt since Iowa.
If this shows anything, it’s that McCain needs Huckabee. Not just in the immediate sense, although indeed it’s hard to see him winning these states in a face-off against Romney. But in the general election, too: McCain would have a hard time finding a VP with more Southern appeal than Huck. And after tonight, McCain owes him.
“They say this is a two-man race," Huckabee said in his partial victory speech. "And guess what: It is! And we’re in it!” He could be right, but not the way he means it.
-
Back-to-back press releases from Mike Huckabee:
Mike Huckabee Wins First Super Tuesday Contest
Former Arkansas Governor Wins All of West Virginia's 18 At-Large Delegates
Then this:
Mike Huckabee Offers His Condolences After Deadly Tornadoes Rip Through Arkansas
Little Rock, AR - Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee has issued the following comment in response to the tragic deaths as a result of severe weather in Arkansas:
"The news of these deadly tornadoes bring back many memories of dealing with numerous tornadoes during my tenure as Governor, and Janet and I know all too well the horrors faced by those in a tornado's path. While we hope tonight is a time for us to celebrate election results, we are reminded that nothing is as important as the lives of these fellow Arkansans, and our hearts go out to their families."
-
Poor Mitt. Even when he does something right, he still screws it up. Today at the West Virginia GOP convention, Mitt Romney finished in a strong first place--on the first ballot. Romney racked up 40.9 percent to Huckabee's 33.1 percent after the first round of voting. Because Romney didn't clear 50 percent on the first round, the convention went to a second ballot, this time without Ron Paul on it. Realizing Romney might win, and there was no way McCain could win, McCain's surrogate pulled McCain out of the race and told his supporters to support Huckabee, instead. It was like a politics-themed episode of Captain Planet. By your powers combined, I am Captain No-Mitt!
All green mullets aside, this means absolutely nothing for how the rest of the day will play out. The final vote tally in West Virginia was 557-522. Yes, you read that right. Eighteen GOP delegates were decided based on 1,100 votes. The Republicans who show up to a state convention are the die hards of the party and party officials--not exactly McCain's crowd. Romney's support there was probably as much of a McCain rebuke as Huckabee's win was an anti-Romney alliance.
UPDATE 4:34 p.m.: Ron Paul tells us he brokered a deal with the Huckabee folks to grab three of the 18 delegates available at the convention. Kudos to the Paulies. But they should double check their math before sending out press releases: "With three national delegates, Ron Paul secured 20 percent
of the 18 delegates that were decided at the State Convention." (emphasis added) That's 16.7 percent.
-
Just because we didn’t live-blog doesn’t mean we didn’t
watch the debate. For what it’s worth, we’re adding our belated thoughts to the
cacophony
of instant
reaction. The executive summary: Nobody screwed up, only Romney helped himself.
John McCain: When
did John McCain become slightly senile? His prolonged spat with Mitt Romney
about Mitt’s non-support
of an Iraq
timetable made McCain look like a desperate slanderer. Considering he’s the
undisputed frontrunner, McCain’s whole strategy was nuts. As my Trailhead
colleague Mr. Beam pointed out, he's the senile grandfather you let prattle on
because its too sad to tell him to shut up. Another McCain highlight of the
night was watching him go out of his way to send some love to California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Word leaked that Ahnold is endorsing
Johnny Mac tomorrow, so there was no chance McCain was going to disagree
with him on fuel-efficiency
federalism. If Anderson Cooper had some stones, he would have asked McCain
whether the Governator was going to endorse him.
Mitt Romney: Mitt
was sharper than a Mormon steeple tonight. He offered something for all three
Reagan-coalition constituencies. The social conservatives got a gay-marriage
ban shout-out (an issue that has disappeared from this cycle). The national
security conservatives saw Romney mount an effective rebuttal to McCain’s
baseless withdrawal claims. In case fiscal conservatives didn’t already know
it, Romney knows what’s up
when it comes to the economy. When McCain attacked Romney’s record in Massachusetts, Romney
yanked stats out of his brain that only an economic cyborg can remember. With
Reagan’s Air Force One as your backdrop, pandering to the Reagan coalition is a
good idea—no matter how tacky that plane looked.
Mike Huckabee:
This was an ugly debate for the Huckster. What makes Huck such an effective
debater is his ability to use his quips as a gateway into important policy
points. Tonight Huck didn’t do that. His best Huckism was a long-winded stat
about sitting in traffic that didn’t fully connect to his policy point: that
fixing the nation’s infrastructure would stimulate the economy. Plus, he pulled
it off better at a fundraiser
earlier in the day. When Romney and McCain started bickering about Iraq timetables,
Huckabee might as well have been wearing a cloak of invisibility. When he
actually spoke, Huckabee complained about not getting a chance to speak—always
a faux pas.
Ron Paul: Poor
Paul. Cooper gave Dr.
No the silent treatment all night. At one point Cooper cut Paul off while he
was trying to answer two questions in one. Cooper promised Paul would get
another chance to speak “coming up in like two
minutes or two questions.” To be fair, Cooper honored his word, but then
cut him off again later in the evening. At one point Paul recoiled from being
cut off, arched an eyebrow, and cocked his head a bit as he stopped himself
from staring Cooper down. On a related note, I don’t remember the last time
Paul was off-message at a debate. Sure, he’s been reduced to a sideshow (fairly
or not), but at least it’s a consistent one.
-
Should be interesting to see how much pickup this little story gets.
Apparently Mike Huckabee backers raised a reported $111,000 during a ministers’ conference hosted by Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, Texas. This could be problematic for two reasons. One is that televangelist Kenneth Copeland is currently under investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley and the Senate Finance Committee for, among other things, allegedly taking a $2 million gift from a ministers’ conference last year. The other is that Huckabee could be violating FEC regulations by raising money from or through a tax-exempt organization.
Both Huckabee’s people and Copeland’s say this is all above board, fair game, etc. The campaign released a statement saying it rented a room for “a separate event that was hosted by a private individual” unrelated to Copeland’s ministry. A Copeland spokesman told the AP that “[n]o offering was or has been taken for any political candidate by Kenneth Copeland Ministries or at a KCM event.”
But then there’s the whole guilt by association thing. Copeland says he’d rather die than open up the group’s accounting books to the Senate committee. The money, he says in one of his many unhinged rants, “belongs to God.” (The video is well worth your while.) According to Copeland, Huckabee's behind him all the way. Here’s his much-quoted account of what Huckabee told him when they spoke on the phone:
“Are you kidding me? Why should I stand with them [U.S. senators ] and not stand with you ? They only got 11 percent approval rating.” And then he said, then he said, “Kenneth Copeland, I will stand with you.” He said “You’re trying to get prosperity to the people, and they [the senators ] are trying to take it away from ‘ em.” He said “I will stand with you anytime anywhere on any issue.” That settled that right there. I said, “Yeah. That’s my man. That’s my man right there,” Copeland said.
A spokeswoman for Huckabee confirmed that the two men spoke on the phone, but has yet to confirm Copeland's account of their conversation, to us or to anyone else. The story is getting plenty of attention on the blogs. But I doubt it will gain real traction until a candidate *cough* Romney *cough* seizes on it.
Hey look, there's a debate tonight.
-
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. – Mike Huckabee rolled into Orange County
today for an event inside the gates of Bayview Estates—a development that bills
itself as a “Residential and Equestrian neighborhood.” Something tells me this
isn’t the target audience for Huckabee’s brand of populism. (Although he did get
his biggest round of applause when he started talking about the Fair Tax.) No signs of Mischa Barton
yet, but there were some other scenes that only a Huckabee fundraiser can
provide:
- A Huck
volunteer named Sharon
was put in charge of having the media sign-in. After one cameraman said
his correspondent had already written their names, Sharon responded with a wide smile: “Bless You.”
- Huckabee was asked about the youth vote
by an MTV News correspondent. Mind you that Newport
Beach is where that god-awful MTV show Newport Harbor is filmed. Unfortunately, I don’t think Huck watches much MTV, so he
didn’t quite note the irony.
- As
Huck shook hands and signed autographs, a greasy
guy in his mid-20s tried to impress a bronzed mid-20s gal by saying she
should go up to Huckabee and ask him to sign her breast, rock-star style.
He was kidding. I think.
- One of
the older women in the crowd had a red LED
ticker pinned to her shirt. Huckabee
2008 slowly crawled across her shirt on an endless loop. I should have
introduced her to the breast-autograph guy.
- Before
Huckabee gave his stump speech, one of his supporters went on stage to
offer an opening invocation. He asked Jesus to give Huckabee strength at
tonight’s debate, and he prayed that the American people would come to
their senses and support him.
- The
entire crowd pledged allegiance to the flag before Huckabee spoke. The
person-to-flag ratio in this estate is probably 5-to-1. I counted a few dozen lining the driveway alone.
In spite of—or maybe because of—all of this, Huckabee managed
to raise 100,000 dollars today. Upon hearing the news Huckabee
quipped, “Our campaign is so frugal, we could go a month on that. We probably
won’t but we could.” He's exactly right, if only because Huck will probably be out of the race in a
month.
-
Over the last few weeks we’ve been trying to calculate the candidates’ expiration dates in our Death Watch series. See our pre-mortem death watch for Rudy Giuliani here.
Mike Huckabee does not have delusions of grandeur for Florida. The day after South Carolina, he said he might not have enough money or support to compete with Romney or McCain, so he hedged his bets. He flitted back and forth all week between Georgia and Tennessee, and he’ll watch tonight’s returns in the latter Missouri*. But don’t expect Huckabee to drop out after today, not when he can still do so much damage.
Huckabee won’t win, but he can drag Romney down with him. Huckabee joined the ranks of the walking dead after he lost South Carolina and his money dried up. But unlike Bill Richardson as he faded away, Huckabee actually has some bite left. If the race becomes a McCromney affair, only Mike Huckabee can stop evangelicals from gravitating toward Mitt. Lately, it seems he’s been auditioning for a role as McCain’s VP, and rightly so: If Johnny Mac wins Florida, it will be partly thanks to Huckabee.
With the opportunity to eat fried-squirrel at official White House dinners, don’t expect Huck to buck the trail quite yet. If he finishes third in Florida (he’s polling fourth), he can gush out a Huckabeeism about David (Huck) defeating Goliath (Rudy) that may get him some mileage. From there, he’ll stay in the South and try to siphon enough votes away from Romney to clear the path for McCain. Ironically, Huckabee is now playing the same role for Romney that Fred Thompson played for him in South Carolina. But if nominated, McCain would sooner make Huckabee the VP than Thompson. The old yet virile war hero and the young but inexperienced spark plug—it’s a match made in heaven, aside from that whole modifying-the-constitution-to-fit-God’s-will part.
*UPDATE 5:56 p.m. PST: Originally this post misstated that Huckabee was spending the night in Tennessee. He was in Missouri.
-
According to CNN's fancy map of South Carolina, Fred Thompson is sapping votes away from Mike Huckabee in the socially conservative north. If that's the case, Thompson probably has a smile on his face.
Thompson's distaste for Huckabee has been apparent throughout the campaign. Thompson often pushes back against Huckabee at debates and regularly sends emails critiquing Huckabee's stances on immigration and taxes. Persona-wise, Huckabee is everything Thompson isn't—charming, funny, and self-effacing. Most importantly, Huckabee possesses the star power that many Republicans hoped Thompson would have in the race. Huck is bizarro Fred.
Most importantly, Huckabee has stolen Thompson's base right out from under him. Thompson's from neighboring Tennessee, after all, so he was the guy supposed to be doing well in conservative South Carolina. Thompson was supposed to be the guy who grabbed the evangelical vote. Thompson was the guy people were supposed to coalesce around. Instead, the story became about Thompson's lassitude and Huckabee's quips.
Given all of this, it's not unreasonable to think that Thompson would stay in the race through Florida just to torment Huckabee. Despite a litany of shortcomings, Thompson still pulled in 15 percent in South Carolina tonight (with 72 percent precincts reporting), so he holds some sway. One would think he'd sap some of Huckabee's strength in Florida, as well. It may be Thompson's only chance to stay relevant.
In his speech tonight, Fred Thompson said his presidential campaign was never about him. He's right. Maybe it was always about Huck.
Photograph of Fred Thompson on Slate's home page by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.
-
Fred Thompson, in his withdrawal way-out-of-first-place speech, finally looked and sounded presidential. But, alas, his time has finally come, whether or not he wants to realize it—and it's all Ronald Reagan's fault.
Thompson reached the most stirring line of his speech this evening when he said that the Reagan coalition was alive and well. If Thompson was right, he would have had more success in this primary race--therefore, he's totally wrong.
A quick primer on the Reagan Coalition: Three different conservative groups—foreign policy, economic, and social conservatives—all coalesced around one candidate to put him in office for eight years. But if any message has become apparent during this mad primary season, it's that there isn't a coalition anymore: It's every splinter group for itself.
Mike Huckabee courts social conservatives because of his hidden-crosses in political ads. Mitt Romney attracts economic conservatives because the only thing about his candidacy that stays constant is his business background. And John McCain courts foreign policy conservatives because of his Senate experience and military years. Note how those three men won the first three major contests. The coalition is dead. And it's questionable whether it will show up again in time for the general election.
If Thompson really thought the Reagan Coalition was going to get him elected, then he just wrote his own obituary.
-
Juicy bits from CNN's exit polls:
- Mike Huckabee and John McCain are in a tight race at the top.
- Young voters lean toward Huckabee, but seniors greatly favor McCain. This isn't surprising but could be a major factor if older voters turned out in greater numbers than the kiddies.
- Mitt Romney won the plurality of votes from Catholics who go to church weekly, which is good news for his campaign after his big Mormon speech a month or two ago. (Unsurprisingly, very religious voters of all denominations preferred Huckabee.)
- Only 9 percent of Catholics, who made up 14 percent of CNN's voter pool, voted for Huckabee. Thirty-nine percent voted for McCain.
- Forty-one percent of South Carolina voters thought McCain had the best chance of winning in November.
- Fifty-eight percent of voters, according to CNN's exit polls, were born-again Christians or evangelicals. They favor Huckabee 41 percent to McCain's 27 percent. Only 11 percent of non-born-agains and evangelicals voted for Huck.
- Huckabee won support among those who care most about immigration, McCain among those who care most about Iraq. Again, this follows the polling we saw before the primary.
- 25 percent of voters were veterans, and that group favored McCain. Huckabee and McCain were essentially tied among non-veterans.
We offer the usual disclaimer that exit polls are just polls, not results.