Huckster with a vengeance

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Does Mike Huckabee have it in for Mitt Romney?

Much food for thought:

For people reading between the lines, Mike Huckabee’s concession speech here Saturday night dropped some enticing hints that his presidential campaign now has an agenda other than getting elected president.

Huckabee’s new role: Mitt killer.

The former Arkansas governor threw air kisses on primary night to winner John McCain, praising him for “running a civil and a good and a decent campaign.”

He also signaled clearly that he is staying in the race, despite losing three straight states. Exit polls in South Carolina indicated — as they had in the previous three contests — that Huckabee did virtually nil with voters beyond his base of conservative evangelicals, raising doubts that he has a plausible path to the GOP nomination.

But as long as Huckabee is campaigning vigorously, he is likely to draw a sizable bloc of social conservatives — and deny former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the direct one-on-one contest he is hoping for against McCain.

Huckabee did not mention Romney in his concession statement Saturday. But Huckabee and his aides have barely disguised their disdain for Romney, whose chameleon-like stance on issues and free-spending negative ad campaign have made him the most unpopular candidate among his GOP rivals.

Could Huckabee be angling for the No. 2 spot on McCain’s ticket, or a Cabinet position in a McCain administration?

Well, sure, maybe. It's possible.

And it would make sense. Huckabee did extremely well with evangelical christianists in South Carolina, that is, with his base of right-wing Christian social conservative ideologues, but his campaign as a viable candidate with a shot of winning is basically over. His support is strong in one of the GOP's core constituencies, but he doesn't have much support anywhere else. He may stay in the race, but he won't win the nomination.

So why not look to the Veep spot?

It is my contention that the race is Romney's to lose -- see here and here -- and I have suggested a possible Romney-Huckabee ticket. And whatever the personal and political animosity, there is no reason to conclude definitively that Romney wouldn't ask him and that Huckabee wouldn't accept.

I may, however, have underestimated the extent and intensity of that animosity, at least from Huckabee's perspective, and it may very well be that he prefers McCain to Romney, and perhaps definitively so. If so, he may be right to remain in the campaign.

Romney would beat McCain (and perhaps handily) in a two-man race, I think, with much of the GOP establishment backing Romney against a man they still distrust, if not loathe, but Huckabee's continued presence in the race as a strong third candidate would, I think, keep him from pulling in enough christianists and social conservatives to put McCain away without a protracted fight. Romney could still win a three-man race, or even a race with a more crowded field, but he wouldn't be able to do so quite as easily as if he were in it along against McCain.

Meanwhile, for his part, McCain will suffer as long as Thompson and Giuliani, two of his natural allies, stay in the race. It may be, then, that his best-case scenario is for Huckabee to stay in the race and for Thompson and Giuliani to get out sooner rather than later. (And a McCain-Huckabee ticket could be formidable.)

Even then, though, it is not clear that Huckabee's support from christianists and social conservatives and implicit (for it is certainly not explicit) support for McCain would translate into enough of a drag on Romney to put McCain over the top. Romney still has a decisive and perhaps insurmountable advantage over McCain, I think, in all-Republican primaries where money/advertising and extensive/effective ground campaigns matter. McCain is the likeable, straight-talking guy who does well in states like New Hampshire, where more personal interaction with voters is stressed, that is, where door-to-door and pancake-breakfast campaigning is what matters, but Romney is the image-conscious guy who can get his message out on a mass scale.

In other words, Mike may want to be a Mitt-killer, but it may not matter. The race, I repeat, is still Mitt's to lose. John has a shot, to be sure, but his battle is still an uphill one.