WASHINGTON (ABP) — Mike Huckabee's Feb. 5 assertion that he is now in a “two-man race” was ratified Feb. 7 when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney dropped out of the Republican contest for the presidency.
With an announcement to Washington conservatives, Romney made Huckabee's assertion — almost unimaginable just a few months ago — essentially true.
“I entered this race because I love America. And because I love America in this time of war, I feel that I now have to stand aside — for our party and our country,” Romney told activists gathered at a Conservative Political Action Committee conference.
Given the fact that Huckabee has far less funding, a far smaller campaign infrastructure and far fewer delegates than Arizona Sen. John McCain, many pundits said the decision essentially assures McCain of the Republican Party's nomination as its 2008 presidential candidate.
“Now, the math is just not in Huckabee's favor,” said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist and expert on evangelicals in politics. “It would be practically impossible for him to win the nomination.”
However, Lindsay added, Romney's “suspension” of his run does one thing for Huckabee. “It secures his sort of importance for the party,” he said. “Huckabee now becomes the darling of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.”
Because some Christian conservative leaders harbor significant animosity toward McCain, Lindsay said, McCain is more likely to ask Huckabee or another conservative Southern governor to be his running mate.
“In many ways, I think it sort of secures his importance for a vice-presidential spot on the ticket, because Huckabee has proven himself to have broad appeal across the South,” he said, noting that no GOP presidential candidate has won the White House in four decades without taking the South.
“McCain can't do it himself,” Lindsay added.
Evangelicals' importance to the party remains questionable. In comments prior to Super Tuesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said he will never vote for McCain and accused him of a litany of political sins.
“I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, has a legendary temper, and often uses foul and obscene language,” Dobson said, in a statement published on the Focus on the Family website.
But McCain has, so far, fared better among evangelical voters than expected in many primary states.
Nonetheless, Lindsay said, such attitudes among influential evangelical leaders like Dobson mean McCain must pick a running mate who speaks to evangelical rank-and-file voters.
“I think that evangelicals will be completely disengaged from the Republican Party if McCain does not name a running mate who not only appreciates but also speaks in the same tones as evangelicals,” he said. “If not, it's 1996 all over again, where you have [Bob] Dole and [Jack] Kemp, neither of whom capture the evangelical heart.”
And unlike 1996, he said, “Democrats are far more savvy these days on how to court evangelical voters than they have been in the past…. And a lot more evangelicals are willing to be courted.”
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