{"id":14506,"date":"2008-02-07T16:00:22","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T21:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14506.html"},"modified":"2008-02-07T16:00:22","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T21:00:22","slug":"and-then-there-were-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/and-then-there-were-two\/","title":{"rendered":"And then there were two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There wasn&#8217;t any real doubt before Mitt Romney ended his presidential campaign, but now that the former governor has officially called it quits, and John McCain&#8217;s nomination is all but assured we have a new question: what is McCain going to do <a href=\"http:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/02\/07\/with-romney-gone-what-will-mccain-do\/\">with Mike Huckabee<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. McCain is now left with one serious opponent &#8212; Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. Mr. Huckabee has proved this year to be an articulate and affable candidate, and his surprise showing in winning a half-dozen Southern states on Tuesday was one reason that Mr. Romney bowed to what was inarguably the inevitable and quit.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Huckabee is a candidate with some shortcomings &#8212; in particular, his lack of experience in foreign affairs &#8212; and, more significant, not much money to soldier on. What is more, Mr. McCain has a big lead in delegates coming out of Tuesday night, and under party rules, Mr. Huckabee would have tough job catching up even if he had the money to do so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which, of course, he doesn&#8217;t. For that matter, I&#8217;m not at all convinced Huckabee is even going to try. He&#8217;s been effectively auditioning to be McCain&#8217;s running mate for a couple of weeks now, and given that he has no practical shot at catching the Arizona senator, it&#8217;s hard to imagine Huckabee launching a no-holds-barred offensive against McCain now.<\/p>\n<p>So, what&#8217;s McCain to do with his only remaining primary opponent who isn&#8217;t Ron Paul? Kevin Drum offered a good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2008_02\/013063.php\">lay of the land<\/a> the other day.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fact 1: John McCain is weak among evangelicals and hardcore conservatives. Fact 2: He was kissing Mike Huckabee&#8217;s ass big time in his victory speech last night. Fact 3: He and Huckabee cut a deal on Tuesday to keep Mitt Romney from winning in West Virginia. Fact 4: Huckabee isn&#8217;t going to win the nomination, but he&#8217;s staying in the race anyway. There must be a reason, hmmm?<\/p>\n<p>Speculation 1: McCain will choose Huckabee as his VP in order to shore up his demographic weaknesses for the general election. Speculation 2: He&#8217;ll throw Huckabee under the bus just as soon as he has this thing sewn up. Which is it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anything&#8217;s possible, of course, but I&#8217;m leaning towards Door #2.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the rub: the same gang of far-right voices who hate McCain, and are looking for <i>some<\/i> kind of reassurance from his campaign, aren&#8217;t especially impressed with Huckabee, either. He raised taxes as governor, used to reject conservative ideas on immigration, and his understanding of foreign policy is similar to that of a child. Let&#8217;s not forget that for a long while, Rush Limbaugh was railing <i>two<\/i> GOP candidates: McCain and Huckabee.<\/p>\n<p>Tapping Huckabee for the ticket would offer McCain some cover with the Dobson crowd, but that&#8217;s really only part of the anti-McCain contingent. For Limbaugh, Malkin, Coulter, &#038; Co., this move would only make matters worse. (Indeed, it&#8217;s not just the clown caucus of the party &#8212; National Review and the Weekly Standard railed against Huckabee&#8217;s incompetence for quite a while once he emerged as a credible candidate.)<\/p>\n<p>With this in mind, I&#8217;d expect McCain to give ol&#8217; Huck a call and say, &#8220;Mike, you&#8217;re great, and if I&#8217;m elected, Health and Human Services is all yours.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And who <i>would<\/i> be on McCain&#8217;s short-list? It&#8217;s a little early yet, but I&#8217;m guessing Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, and South Dakota Sen. John Thune would be top contenders.<\/p>\n<p>Who do you see on McCain&#8217;s short list?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There wasn&#8217;t any real doubt before Mitt Romney ended his presidential campaign, but now that the former governor has officially called it quits, and John McCain&#8217;s nomination is all but assured we have a new question: what is McCain going to do with Mike Huckabee? Mr. McCain is now left with one serious opponent &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/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-14506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14506","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=14506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}