Mike Huckabee

Facing reporters the day after she and John McCain went down to defeat, Sarah Palin professed not to be thinking much about the next presidential election.

“2012 sounds so far off,” she said.

Of course, that’s exactly the kind of answer that any potential presidential candidate is supposed to give now and for the next two years or so – until the 2010 midterm elections signal the more formal start of the next White House campaign cycle.  read more »

And make no mistake: the race is very much underway, and it has been for some time. In fact, there’s already been

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has announced on his Web site that his weekend variety show "Huckabee," will be airing for the first time on Fox News this Saturday and Sunday night.

From Mr. Huckabee's post:

All of us have been talking about the show I will be doing for Fox News. I wanted to bring you up to date on what is going on.

The show will be called "Huckabee." I'm sure the name will make it easy for all of you to find it. "Huckabee" will air this Saturday and Sunday at 8 PM Eastern time on Fox News Channel.

So has Fox News actually picked up the show for an extended run? Or is Saturday night's program merely a pilot?

We called Fox News to find out. A spokesperson referred questions to Mr. Huckabee's agent.

We'll update once we hear back.

Last night Mike Huckabee thanked the “elite media” for unifying the Republican Party behind the McCain-Palin ticket.

“I wasn’t sure it could be done,” he said, drawing happy laughter from the crowd.

There were "boos" directed at the press stand last night, and a few more attacks before it was time to file. The media were sitting right there, in plain view, half of them in a section to the immediate right of the stage and all the rest on the left. Arranged by affiliation, they sat quietly in their assigned seats, typing on their laptops with their little hands. The New York Times reporters sat in one row, The Washington Post in another, and so forth; instead of individual desks, each of these was equipped with a long, black surface that resembled nothing so much as a trough.  read more »

Before tonight's proceedings in St. Paul, the venerable National Journal released its latest poll of Republican "insiders," in which several dozen party establishment figures were asked -- with a guarantee of anonymity -- to handicap the 2012 G.O.P. presidential field (contingent on a John McCain defeat this fall).

Their consensus: Mitt Romney is the runaway front-runner, favored by 55 percent, with "nobody" finishing a distant second, at 15 percent. For a party that is fond of anointing an heir apparent years in advance of its nominating contests -- and then ratifying that selection through the primary process -- Romney seemed to be in a commanding situation, roughly where Ronald Reagan was in 1976, George H.  read more »

The main strategic knock on the last night's primetime G.O.P. convention session was its decided lack of red meat-attacks on Barack Obama. Instead, the evening was given over to building John McCain's biography and to framing his campaign as a principled crusade that rises above partisan politics.

Good enough, but with Sarah Palin slated to speak tonight and John McCain on tap for tomorrow night, when will the Republicans showcase the kind of bare-knuckled (and highly effective) attacks on Obama that they directed at John Kerry in New York four years ago?

A look at tonight's schedule and the some of the speech excerpts pre-released this afternoon suggests they will try to kill two birds with one stone this evening.  read more »

In an interview on Fox News today, Mike Huckabee registered his objection to the idea of Mitt Romney joining this year’s Republican ticket.

“Mitt Romney has had very definite swings of positions— not just one or two little things, but on many of the issues,” Huckabee said.  He later added: “I think that there are better choices for Senator McCain, that would have the approval of values voters.”

Huckabee’s concerns, it’s probably fair to assume, have a lot more to do with 2012 then with 2008. Both Huckabee and Romney saw their reputations enhanced by their campaigns this year, and each now has high name recognition and a sizable following within the G.  read more »

The New York Post reports today that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was in town recently to tape a pilot for a weekend variety show for Fox News, which will apparently premier sometime this fall.

The report was based on an interview that Mr. Huckabee did over the weekend with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

From the Democrat-Gazette article:

First, the TV bit. It seems such a natural as to be a stereotype. Huck TV. What else but? Mike Huckabee is to radio, television, Internet, YouTube, multi-media and anything involving a microphone-and-camera as leaves are to trees. Sometimes it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Of his show, Huckabee offers only generalities: "I can say it's gonna be unlike anything else that's on FOX and maybe on cable." When asked if it's a talk show, Huckabee says, "yes and no. Not a talk show like you've seen. We'll have a live studio audience and some very innovative features."

Update, 12:55 PM: Politico's Michael Calderone got the following statement from Fox News:

[C]ontrary to what was reported in today’s NY Post — Mike Huckabee has not shot a pilot for Fox News. We are in discussion about developing a show with him in the future, but remain in the early planning stages.  read more »

The case for Mitt Romney as John McCain’s running mate is strong and very easy to make.

He’s well known, popular with the party base, a strong performer on television, and would bring big bucks, vigor and youth (or at least the appearance of it – he is 61, after all) to a Republican ticket that desperately needs all three. Plus, Romney’s corporate background would offer badly needed cover to McCain on the economy, while his family name could boost the ticket in Michigan and his Mormon faith could help in Colorado and Nevada. Factor in the apparent lack of all-star VP options for McCain, and the former Massachusetts governor’s prospects only seem to brighten.  read more »

Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn will introduce former Republican Governor Mike Huckabee at a Manhattan dinner tonight honoring the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel.

According to the press release, headlined "HIKIND & HUCKABEE," the two will appear at the Jerusalem Reclamation Project Dinner at 7:30 p.m. at the Marriott.  read more »

The inscrutable Mike Huckabee has secured a book deal with Sentinel, the conservative imprint of Penguin Group USA that also recently acquired Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs.

From the announcement: "Governor Huckabee's book will lay out his optimistic vision for America's future and explain how the conservative movement can return to its principles, unify its factions, and take back America."

More on this later, maybe!

It's not a big surprise, but within minutes of the polls closing, Vermont has been called for Barack Obama and John McCain.

A deluge of polls on the day before the March 4 primaries shows mixed results:   read more »

Over the weekend, the first new episode of Saturday Night Live to air since the end of the writers’ strike posted the show’s highest ratings since Feb. 4, 2006, easily topping seven million viewers, Variety reports. SNL hadn’t broadcast since the fall, which made Saturday’s show—the first in four consecutive weeks of new SNL episodes—with Tina Fey as host (see above), guest appearances by Mike Huckabee (he was on Weekend Update, too) and Steve Martin (who, coincidentally, hosted the Feb. 4, 2006 episode), and a musical performance by Carrie Underwood, a highly anticipated event.  read more »

Chuck Norris isn’t the only celebrity who has stumped for Republican Mike Huckabee. Here’s a clip of rock group KB Gunn and the Boston Tea Party singing their support for the presidential hopeful from Arkansas. The tune, cleverly titled “The Huckabee Song,” rides high on harmonic intricacies that alone express a fiery passion for Mr. Huckabee’s unique platform of issues. Self-styled proponents of real change in the nation’s capital, Mr. Gunn and his invisible collective of New England-based herb flakes have crafted lyrics, too, which drive at the heart of Mr. Huckabee’s vision for America.

A song without sound is like a painting without a canvas or something, but here’s a little taste of the tune’s poetry. “The Huckabee Song” begins:

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

I like Huckabee for president—Huckabee!

Though certainly sufficient, those aren’t the only reasons why KB Gunn and the Boston Tea Party want you to vote for Mr. Huckabee. “The home of the brave, the land of the free,” they sing, “needs a leader like Mike Hukabee.” Oh, and we almost forgot—“he wants to fix our country’s press” and “end the IRS.” But at the end of the day, don’t we all?

Mike Huckabee is coming to New York City on February 27. He may appear outside the city, too, for the right price: $30,000.

That's what Huckabee’s New York Chairman, M. Myers Mermel, says is needed to schedule each additional stop on Huckabee's visit here. In an email to supporters just now, Mermel wrote:  read more »

SOULED OUT: RECLAIMING FAITH & POLITICS AFTER THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Princeton University Press, 251 pages, $24.95

“I hope we can answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, proclaimed in 1998. Ten years later, Mr. Huckabee remains committed to a fundamentalist agenda on abortion, evolution school prayer and gay marriage. But his tone—and tactics—have changed.

He always gets asked “the God questions,” Mr. Huckabee complained to Liane Hansen of National Public Radio, when he’d rather be talking about public policy: “I was a governor ten and a half years and led in education, rebuilding our road system, health care [and] never really governed with a sense of religious fervor. I run for president and that’s all people want to talk about.”  read more »

The 2008 presidential election here in the United States is very important to the French. How important? “Too important," said Douglas Herbert, business editor with the TV news station France 24, "to be left to the American electorate to decide.”

In this, France is not alone. Across Europe, journalists and editors interviewed by The Observer say, people are coming down with the 2008 fever.  read more »

Though the Democratic nomination has yet to be decided, Barack Obama and John McCain have begun acting very much as if the general election has already started, exchanging direct criticisms and sizing each other up. And, while neither has talked publicly about it at this early stage, both men are doubtless pondering the running-mate question.

In a matchup with Obama, McCain would face two potentially conflicting imperatives with his choice of a vice presidential candidate.  read more »

Imagine that you’ve somehow found yourself on trial, mistakenly accused of some criminal act that you would never even think about committing. A guilty verdict will destroy your good name and send you away to a very bad place.

When the trial opens, the eager prosecutor lays out the case, an avalanche of seemingly damning—but, in actuality, entirely circumstantial—evidence. You stew at the defense table, aching for a chance to respond.

But before your moment arrives, the 12 jurors decide they’ve heard enough. With the trial still ongoing, they each cast early “guilty” verdicts. When you finally take the stand and prove—like a scene out of Matlock—that you’ve been wrongly accused, the jurors are all far away from the courtroom, back at their jobs or maybe just lounging around at home. You lose.  read more »

There were 116 total delegates at stake in the Republican presidential race tonight, and John McCain has apparently won all of them—terrific news for a candidate who began the day about 400 delegates shy of the magic number needed to clinch the nomination.

And two of his primary wins were by convincing margins—in Maryland, where he led Mike Huckabee by a two-to-one margin, and in the District of Columbia, where he was the overwhelming choice of the approximately 4,000 voters who took Republican ballots.

And now the bad news: McCain got a serious scare in Virginia, finally pulling out a high single-digit victory after trailing Huckabee in the early returns. McCain had been the runaway leader—by about 30 points—in polls taken just last week in Virginia.  read more »

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—John McCain just rounded off his victory speech here by cheekily appropriating one of Barack Obama's signature lines.

"I promise you I am fired up and ready to go," he told a cheering crowd.

The Arizona senator's speech seemed to target Obama more than Clinton, in yet another sign of the shifting dynamics of the Democratic race.

At one point he suggested that Obama's candidacy offered "not a promise of hope but a platitude."  read more »

Signs point to a very long night for Hillary Clinton. Polls are still open in Maryland and in the District of Columbia, but they have just closed in Virginia—and news outlets have already declared Barack Obama the winner by a wide margin.

Virginia was Clinton's best chance of scoring an upset victory, or at least keeping the race close enough to declare a moral victory. If she has lost lopsidedly in Virginia, it points to even worse defeats for her in Maryland and D.C.  read more »

Yummmm…What’s that delicious smell? Oh, my stars—it’s the “Chuck 4 Huck” Barbeque, of course!

In this promo clip for Republican Mike Huckabee, actor Chuck Norris, enunciating and gesticulating like he’s speaking to a mature golden retriever, invites viewers to join his Internet cookout party for the presidential hopeful and former governor of Arkansas. During the political party, Mr. Norris says he plans to—wait for it, wait for it—take guests on a virtual tour of his Texas ranch! For anyone still on the fence, the 67-year-old former Walker star, a nasty martial artist, surely seals the deal by promising to show off “the workout area where I train.” There won’t be any dessert, because it’s hard to serve dessert over the Web. BUT! “My black belts are going to give a demonstration,” Mr. Norris says.

Here’s what’s at stake in today's primary contests:

Democrats

Barack Obama is supposed to go three-for-three on the day. Short of engineering an upset victory—which would represent a campaign-changing development—Hillary Clinton’s best hope lies in containing her opponent’s victory margins and keeping the delegate race close, possibly positioning her to declare some kind of moral victory. On the heels of her weekend drubbings—and the news that she is replacing her campaign manager—the risk for Clinton tomorrow is obvious: Three more unspinnably lopsided defeats could create the impression that her campaign is in a tailspin, and that Obama is beginning to pull away.

Maryland:  read more »

The McCain campaign just announced that Gary Bauer has endorsed John McCain. Bauer is the onetime president of the Family Research Council, founder of the Campaign for Working Families PAC, former presidential candidate, and an enthusiastic supporter of traditional marriage and turning over Roe v. Wade.

His endorsement should help soothe some of the conservative rebellion against what seems like McCain’s inevitable path to the Republican presidential nomination. It also seems like a bit of a blow to Mike Huckabee, whose wins this weekend were a sign of support from social conservatives. Huckabee had just earned the endorsement of James Dobson.

Release after the jump.  read more »

Mike Huckabee's overpowering win in the Kansas caucuses equips him with a useful weapon to beat back calls for his immediate departure from the Republican race, but it won't do anything to reverse John McCain's overall inevitability.

Trouncing McCain in lightly-attended caucuses in a state where conservative Christians hold disproportionate sway simply represents a continuation of the pattern that has defined this G.O.P. race. Huckabee does exceedingly well in states like Kansas and Iowa and across the South, but remains incapable of making inroads in the rest of the country. With McCain only about 450 delegates shy of the Republican nomination, there are simply too many non-Southern, non-Christian conservative-dominated states left for Huckabee—or anyone else—to catch him.  read more »

The race for the 2012 Republican nomination is on, with the two early leaders—Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee—using this year’s campaign, in very different ways, to position themselves for what many in the party privately believe will be an open nomination.

Granted, it’s somewhat premature to discuss the 2012 race when John McCain, who is now the presumptive nominee, actually leads Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (slightly) in some polls. If McCain wins in the fall (and seeks a second term at age 76) then there probably won’t be any room for Romney or Huckabee or anyone else four years from now.

But the same was true back in 1996, when Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes came up short in the primaries and immediately started laying the groundwork for follow-up bids in 2000—even while publicly professing that they expected Bob Dole to be running for reelection that year.

Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee are well aware of the G.O.P.’s tendency to nominate the candidate whose “turn” it is, a pattern that—in a very roundabout way—has reaffirmed itself with the success of Mr. McCain, the second-place candidate from the last open Republican contest. In fact, George W. Bush is the only non-incumbent Republican since Barry Goldwater to win the presidential nomination on his first try.

And with Mr. McCain emerging as the nominee and quite possibly facing defeat in the fall, the race between Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney seems to be on to play the next-in-line role in 2012.

There was no accident in the setting Mitt Romney chose to end his 2008 presidential bid. In front of some of the right’s truest believers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he presented his withdrawal as a patriotic act of self-sacrifice, sparing his party a protracted nomination fight and freeing Republicans to unite against the Democrats and “a surrender to terror.”

He might just as well have announced his ‘12 candidacy on the spot. The CPAC attendees represent the conservative activists who Mr. Romney tried mightily to unite behind his candidacy this year. He had some success, but not quite enough. Now he has four years to try again.

More after the jump.  read more »

Mitt Romney just withdrew from the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries—he won the states he has lived in and a series of not particularly contested caucuses.

In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Romney noted that he "hates to lose" but is withdrawing because "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win."

He also said, "we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism!!"

Full text of the speech after the jump.  read more »

Mark Halperin is reporting that Romney will drop out of the race, possibly making his announcement at Conservative Political Action Conference today.

UPDATE: CNN is now reporting that Romney will suspend his campaign.

Following John McCain’s victory in Florida last week the chorus of McCain-hatred grew louder on talk radio shows and on many conservative blogs.

Rush Limbaugh declared that McCain was not conservative and unacceptable as a candidate. Formerly respectable conservative figures took delight in criticizing McCain’s war record—yes, his war record—by tallying up the number of planes he had lost in combat. Ann Coulter and James Dobson, a social conservative leader and head of the Focus on the Family organization, declared McCain so indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton, the featured villainess in any conservative drama, that they would vote for her or stay home.

In short the McCain villifiers doubled down on their bet that they could derail McCain and lift their favored alternative, Mitt Romney, to victory.  read more »

Each of the Republicans can claim some kind of victory tonight, but the big winner is clearly John McCain-–with a major assist from Mike Huckabee.

John McCain won the most delegates today, with a tally that could reach as high as 600, depending on how California shakes out (it has more than half of the number needed to clinch the nomination). McCain did win the most states, but his delegate total was additionally padded by victories in some large winner-take-all states, like New York and New Jersey. He can also claim a win in the South (Oklahoma), along with a string of close second-place finishes in that region (which netted him a bundle of delegates, since those states award their delegates proportionally). His California victory makes for a powerful statement for the kind of day he had.  read more »

With tallies still outstanding from California and a few other states, NBC has Barack Obama leading the day's pledged delegate county, 594-546. (Slightly closer than the Obama campaign’s reported estimate.)

On the Republican side, the numbers are less clear, but NBC is predicting that John McCain will receive between 400 and 600 today, while Mitt Romney will grab between 150 and 400, and Mike Huckabee will finish with about 200.

As a fuller picture of the results in Southern states emerges, it now appears that Mike Huckabee has undermined Mitt Romney's campaign. Romney, whose last-ditch strategy involves trying to rally the party's conservative base around him in opposition to John McCain and his supposed crimes against conservatism, badly needs a handful of wins in states like Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri -- places where his new message should most resonate. But Huckabee's regional and cultural appeal in those states threatened to steal the voters that Romney is targeting.  read more »

That Barack Obama has won Georgia is no surprise. That he apparently has won it by such a large margin -- perhaps exceeding 70 percent of the statewide vote, if early reports are true -- is a shock, and could portend trouble for Hillary Clinton nationwide tonight. Georgia's Democratic electorate, like South Carolina's, is about 50 percent black, and Obama has apparently won this constituency overwhelmingly.  read more »

Another example of the enduring John McCain-Mike Huckabee alliance and its consequences for Mitt Romney: Huckabee just won the West Virginia State Republican Convention thanks to an assist from McCain.

Romney targeted West Virginia, where a vote of the 1,100 delegates at the state G.O.P. convention determines which presidential candidate will receive all 18 of West Virginia's delegates to the national convention.

More after the jump.  read more »

One of the less-discussed Super Tuesday contests is the West Virginia Republican Convention.

It's already been called, and all delegates at stake have gone to Mike Huckabee, after supporters of Ron Paul and John McCain (whose support was trailing) defected to the former Arkansas governor.

Mitt Romney, Huckabee and Paul all addressed the convention before voting began.

More from AP.

Democrats

Barack Obama:

At a minimum, Obama needs to keep the overall delegate count relatively close, so that even if he falls behind Hillary, he won’t be in a position where he needs to sweep the rest of the primaries and caucuses to catch up. Even though delegates are given out proportionally at the district level, Obama also needs to win multiple states in different regions to make a statement about his national viability.  read more »

When John McCain and Mike Huckabee forged an informal alliance just before the Iowa caucuses, skeptics called it a fleeting marriage of convenience.

With an assist from McCain, Huckabee would fend off Mitt Romney in Iowa, thereby wounding Romney and creating an opening for McCain in New Hampshire. Then, with Romney marginalized, McCain and Huckabee would call off their truce and tear into each other in a one-on-one battle for the nomination.

That’s not quite how it’s worked out, though.  read more »