Blatant Reality

Huckabee has officially dropped out of the race along with giving McCain his endorsement. The question now remains, will his supporters follow suit and support McCain? I’m not going to lie, I was a supporter for Huckabee and I really don’t like McCain to much. However, is McCain really that bad when compared to Hillary or Barack? I really don’t think so.

If you part of the massive evangelical support Huckabee had, I’m guessing that the reason you supported him was partly for his views on abortion of gay marriage. McCain at least gives lip service if not supports the same ideas as Huckabee in this area. You can’t even say anything like that for either Barack or Hillary. I mean, would you really want to support someone who receives 0%’s from the National Right to Life Committee and 100%’s from NARAL Pro-Choice America? Both Barack and Hillary received those scores. At least McCain got a 75% from the National Right to Life Committee and a 0% fom the NARAL Pro-Choice America groups.

Another thing to keep in mind is that McCain at least has a military background so he should have the qualifications to help us out with out national defense and the situation in Iraq. That is way more than what you can say for either Hillary or Barack.

Also, please don’t vote for an independent like Nader or someone like Paul (if he decides to run third party). That would really just waste your vote. You can talk all you want about not wanting to be confined to choose between two candidates and that it is your right to freely express yourself, but the reality is if you supported Huckabee and vote for anyone else other than McCain this November, you are helping either Barack or Hillary into office. Don’t do that. If you feel the need to vote for someone else other than McCain, drive to one of the states that hasn’t had their primary and vote for Hillary to get it out of your system.

Therefore my message is this: We all might not be too happy with who the Republican’s choice is for nominee but it sure is better than the Democratic alternatives.

So come November, as much as I might cringe when I do it, McCain’s name will be marked on my ballot as my choice for the next President of the United States.

Just by looking at the results for Washington, one should become suspicious. With only 87% of the votes counted and Huckabee down by roughly 240 votes, the win has been called for McCain.

Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser announced late Saturday that McCain had won the 2008 Republican caucuses in the state with 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. McCain had 25.5 percent over Huckabee’s 23.7 percent in that race.

 

Esser issued a statement congratulating McCain on a “hard-fought win,” and Huckabee on a “strong second-place finish.”

 

Ed Rollins, Huckabee campaign chairman, directly challenged Esser’s move, saying the count was incomplete because the other 12.8 percent of precincts could tip the scales since McCain was beating Huckabee by only a couple hundred votes.

 

“The chairman showed very bad judgment in stopping the voting last night when announcing John McCain had won, when there was less than a 200-vote margin between the two candidates,” Rollins told FOX News in an exclusive interview. “You never announce a vote, in my 40 years of politics, I have never know anybody to announce a vote count before the vote is counted.”

Now, Washington also has a primary coming up on the 19th of this month. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if it is another close race but Huckabee comes out on top? If they don’t settle this caucus business before then, it could be a very sticky situation. Here is CNN’s political ticker for Washington that has the current vote count.

(h/t Hot Air)

According to Fox News’ projection, Huckabee is set to win Kansas with a commanding lead over McCain.

Mike Huckabee won the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses, beating John McCain, according to a projection by Fox News.

 

With 65 percent of Kansas’s precincts reporting, former Arkansas governor Huckabee, 52, was leading 61 percent to 24 percent for Arizona Senator McCain, 71, and 11 percent for Ron Paul, according to the Associated Press.

 

At stake in today’s vote are 36 of the state’s 39 delegates to the Republican National Convention in September. The state has three so-called super delegates who can decide on their own who to support.

Lets hope that this is a sign of things to come now that Romney is officially out of the race.

UPDATE:

Here is Gateway Pundits’ take on what Huckabee’s impressive win means for McCain.

Mike Huckabee’s has a new fundraising goal of 1,000,000 dollars by February 12 at midnight. With his recent successes this past Tuesday, I feel this goal shouldn’t be too hard to meet.

Now, a lot of you feel that Mike Huckabee isn’t a fiscal conservative but I feel that really isn’t the case. When you look at how much money each campaign has raised, Huckabee has raised the least with a total of roughly 9 million dollars (as of the end of December). This amount is only a tenth of what Romney has raised and about a fifth of what McCain has raised. Now, in my eyes, for a candidate to run such a successful campaign on such limited amounts of cash shows that he if very careful with his money. So why wouldn’t we believe that this trait will transfer over when he is in office? All governments have to spend our tax dollars so wouldn’t you want a president who is used to doing more for less? Do you see those qualities in Romney or McCain?

Now I am not saying that raising money is bad and that candidates shouldn’t be out there trying to raise as much money as they can. I am just trying to point out the fact that Huckabee has done extremely well even though he has had a lot less resources at his disposal.

This idea of financial responsibility also reminds me of the parable in Luke about the shrewd manager and in particular Luke 16:10-12 where Jesus states:

¹⁰ “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. ¹¹ So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ¹² And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?”

Now doesn’t that just remind you of Mike Huckabee? Well, I’m sure not all of you would agree but I at least feel this verse applies.

And just for kicks, here is the fundraising data for Obama and Hillary. Take note that as of the end of December, Mitt Romney had actually outspent Hillary and Obama. I found that a little interesting.

Yep, Mike Huckabee is the winner in each of these state and I must say that I am pleasantly surprised at these results. All day I was pretty nervous about how well Huckabee would do but it seems that my fears were fairly unfounded. One thing that I did enjoy about tonight (other than the fact that Huckabee did so well) was that in all the states Huckabee won, it was a close race. This kept it pretty interesting to watch the results trickle in (and still trickling it at the time of this posting). Here are the results from the states that have been called a win for Huckabee:

Alabama

Arkansas

Georgia

Tennessee

West Virginia

Huckabee also gave a speech at the end of the night reiterating the fact that he isn’t going to give up until all the delegates are won.

Today has been a day when the people have spoken. And today people across this country are saying that, yes, we heard what the pundits said. But this is our vote, not theirs. This is our election, not theirs. This is our presidency, not theirs.

 

And for all those people who have made sacrifices to help us be here, I want to say thank you. And I also want you to know that as long as there’s still votes and delegates to be won until that magic number of 1,191, there’s going be one guy answering the bell every time there’s a new round.

Huckabee won the West Virginian Caucus, beating second place Romney by 4%!

In the first Super Tuesday result, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won an upset victory at the West Virginia Republican presidential convention, scoring all 18 of the state’s delegates.

 

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who had worked hard to organize in the Mountaineer State, came in second.

Could this be a sign of what the rest of the results tonight might look like? I have a bad feeling it won’t but you just never know…

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee vowed to stick in the race until someone has the needed 1,191 delegates to win the Republican nomination even if that means staying in after “Super Tuesday.”

“I’ll stay in until someone has 1,191 delegates,” the former Arkansas governor insisted Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Kennesaw, Ga. He was referring to the number of convention delegates needed to win the party nod. “A year ago, nobody said I’d still be here. Look who’s still on his feet.”

 

With 21 states holding contests Tuesday and offering more than 1,000 delegates, Huckabee’s continued presence could be a major factor in what essentially has become a two-man race between Republican front-runner John McCain and Mitt Romney.

 

A Southerner and one-time Baptist preacher, Huckabee hopes to perform strongly, if not win, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri to reinvigorate his campaign.

If you are from those states listed above and support Huckabee, you better vote for him on Tuesday. You also better tell all your friends to vote for Huckabee on Tuesday as well. I know that in Missouri its an open primary so tell everyone, be it a republican, democrat, or independent, to go and vote for Huckabee.

Today, over 30 Missouri State legislators endorsed Mike Huckabee for President.

State Senator Delbert Scott and State Rep. Scott Lipke, two co-chairs of Huckabee’s Missouri campaign, introduced Huckabee and then presented the other state legislators supporting him.”He is a solid conservative who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is,” Lipke said . “As governor, Huckabee cut taxes where he could and made good use of the revenues he had improving roads and education in Arkansas. That is the kind of common sense leadership the country needs right now.”

Go to the article to see a list of who the other legislators are.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Mike Huckabee has a slight lead over McCain in the Missouri Republican Primary. Huckabee and McCain are basically tied, each receiving 27% and 26% respectively but Huckabee has something that McCain doesn’t have. According to the same poll, Huckabee also had a higher percentage of those who said they were “certain” that they would vote Huckabee.

In Missouri, Huckabee’s support is a bit more solid than McCain’s. Among those who currently support the former Arkansas Governor, 63% are “certain” they will vote for him on election day. Just 56% of McCain’s supporters are that certain. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Romney supporters say the same about their candidate.

 

Mike Huckabee is viewed favorably by 70% of Likely Republican Primary Voters while 67% offer such a positive assessment of McCain. Giuliani gets favorable reviews from 60% while Romney’s favorable ratings are at 58%. Ron Paul is viewed favorably by just 24%.

Huckabee’s campaign seems to be still alive and going strong after it was able to raise $1 million dollars in just over six days. Why is this fairly amazing? Well, for one thing, many people had discounted Huckabee from the race because of his second place finish in South Carolina last Saturday. This extreme outpouring of financial support sure points to the idea that Huckabee still has a strong support base. So for all you Huckabee supporters out there, thank you and keep up the good work.