Mike Huckabee made it clear to a group of reporters this morning that he will not concede until John McCain secures the 1,191 delegates needed to become the Republican presidential nominee. "It could be that nobody ends up with 1,191 delegates prior to the convention," Huckabee said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "While a lot of people say that would be terrible, those are the rules. I didn't make up the rules. The party did."
Huckabee declared that he "absolutely, categorically" would not drop out of the presidential race and run for the seat held by Arkansas senator Mark Pryor, who is up for reelection this year. "There's a greater chance that I would dye my hair green and get tattoos all over my body and do a rock tour with Amy Winehouse," Huckabee said. Despite his start in politics as a U.S. Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee now believes he has the "temperament of a chief executive" and has no interest in running for Senate in two years when Arkansas's other Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln is up for reelection.
Right now, Huckabee is focused on tailoring his message to each and every primary and caucus, hoping to pluck away as many delegates as he can along the way. In a robocall to voters in the District of Columbia, Huckabee pledged support for D.C. congressional representation, though he clarified this morning that he believes D.C. should have representation in the House but not the Senate, and he thinks a Constitutional amendment would be necessary to make this change. In Wisconsin's February 19 primary, Huckabee says he will have an advantage because Wisconsin is a "a strong pro-life state among Republican voters," and, in contrast to Huckabee, McCain is opposed to a Human Life Amendment and has supported federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research.
In order to prevent the Republican race from heading to a brokered convention in September, John McCain would need to garner about 45 percent of the remaining delegates, while Huckabee would need to win almost every single delegate in the remaining contests - including today's primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. As Huckabee likes to say, he majored in miracles, not math.
If Huckabee's strategy is to win enough delegates to provide leverage for a vice presidential bid, he didn't let on when he provided generic answers to questions about what qualities are needed in a vice president. Unless Huckabee upsets McCain today, chances of the race dragging on until the convention will diminish significantly.
But who knows what will happen? Perhaps divine intervention still has a role to play in the Republican race. Though I for one will be praying for Providence to convince Amy Winehouse that she desperately needs a smooth-talking, fair-taxing Southern Baptist bass player. Then Huckabee might realize a run for U.S. Senate isn't such a bad idea after all.
