{"id":14478,"date":"2008-02-05T14:50:03","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T19:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14478.html"},"modified":"2008-02-05T14:50:03","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T19:50:03","slug":"first-super-tuesday-result-huckabee-takes-wva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/first-super-tuesday-result-huckabee-takes-wva\/","title":{"rendered":"First Super Tuesday result — Huckabee takes W.Va."},"content":{"rendered":"

Of the 43 contests held today, 42 are either primaries or caucuses. The exception is West Virginia’s Republican state convention, which met this afternoon. And the first winner of a Super Tuesday contest is … Mike Huckabee<\/a>, who picked up all of West Virginia’s 18 delegates today.<\/p>\n

Huckabee bested Mitt Romney, who entered the Mountain State event with the largest bloc of pledged convention-goers. Both men and Ron Paul made in-person appeals to the more than 1,100 convention delegates attending Tuesday’s convention.<\/p>\n

But the former Arkansas governor beat his Massachusetts counterpart after delegates for John McCain defected to his side.<\/p>\n

The first round of voting at the state convention produced no winner, but eliminated Paul after his fourth-place finish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is Huckabee’s first victory anywhere since his win in Iowa just over a month ago, and is something of a setback for Romney, who actually campaigned in West Virginia and was generally expected to come out on top today.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Romney was well ahead on the first ballot, which showed him leading the field with 41%, followed by Huckabee at 33%, John McCain at 16%, and Ron Paul at 10%. On the second ballot, though, which narrowed the race to the top two, Huckabee picked up the bulk of the other candidates’ supporters, and beat Romney, 52% to 47%.<\/p>\n

As Eric Kleefeld noted<\/a>, “Not only do the other candidates dislike Romney — their supporters all hate him, too.”
\n
\nAnd in case you’re wondering — I was — about how West Virginia’s process works, it’s apparently pretty complicated. Painfully so. Jonathan Martin explained<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My colleague Lisa Lerer offers this dispatch from Charleston, W.Va: “This has been the slow drill school of dentistry.” <\/p>\n

That’s how John McCutcheon, Mitt Romney’s senior adviser in West Virginia, describes the state’s brand-new presidential convention process. <\/p>\n

The analogy might be painful, but the point is well-taken: West Virginia’s convention process makes the Iowa caucus look easy. […]<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, counties held staggered elections to pick 1,207 delegates to send to the state convention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Someday, every state will just host a nice, normal primary. Until then, this is all very silly.<\/p>\n

As for the bigger picture, Huckabee hoped not to get shut out on Super Tuesday, and he’s already got one win under his belt. (Whether it’s his only win remains to be seen.) If he’s looking for a rationale to keep fighting, a victory or two ought to do the trick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of the 43 contests held today, 42 are either primaries or caucuses. The exception is West Virginia’s Republican state convention, which met this afternoon. And the first winner of a Super Tuesday contest is … Mike Huckabee, who picked up all of West Virginia’s 18 delegates today. Huckabee bested Mitt Romney, who entered the Mountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}