Huckabee Dropping Out?

There are starting to be whispers that Mike Huckabee might drop out of the Republican Presidential Primary to run for Senate back in Arkansas. Huckabee is a right wing Republican who has done better in the “liberal media” than among the Republican faithful. However, if Huckabee ends his Presidential bid, it would have major ramifications on the Republican primary. It builds up Sam Brownback as the default candidate of social conservatives and allows more room for an underdog like Brownback (or Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo) to emerge on the right of the Republican field.

It also has big ramifications in Iowa. Why? Because recently Huckabee received endorsements from two of Iowa’s major social conservatives, Bob Vander Plaats, who earned his conservative street cred by undercutting Doug Gross in the 2002 Republican Gubernatorial Primary and Danny Carroll, who defrauds the elderly and runs dirty campaigns. (However, in Carroll’s defense, he doesn’t smoke, drink, or make graven images). With Huckabee out of the race, the endorsements of these highly moral members of the Moral Majority would be up for grabs. If they both endorsed someone like Brownback, Brownback would automatically become a credible challenger to the “Big Three” of McCain, Giuliani and Romney in Iowa. However, if their endorsement went to a “Big Three” candidate, most probably Romney, it further starves the remaining second tier candidates of media attention and increases expectations for the endorsed candidate. Although Huckabee probably will not make any final decision until after the Ames straw poll in August, it seems increasingly likely that he may be Tom Vilsack’s counterpart as the first to be culled from the Republican field.

Add comment March 5th, 2007