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The state of the Republican race

James Forsyth

Wednesday, 6th February 2008

The key question in the Republican primary is how many states and delegates can Mike Huckabee win. His surprisingly strong showing has altered the balance of the race and combined with John McCain’s victory in California effectively ended Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes.

Huckabee is even less beloved by the Republican establishment than McCain. His best, and possibly only, route onto the ticket is to pick up enough support that McCain is obliged to offer him a spot to prevent a messy convention.

McCain can be relatively satisfied with his performance tonight. He would have liked wins in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee—all of which he lost to Huckabee by a couple of points or so—but he saw off the most serious threat to his nomination, which was Romney unifying hard core conservatives against him.

The challenge for McCain now is to start bringing the party together and rattling off a string of victories. The McCain camp will be looking to win at least three of the six Republican contests coming up in the next week. The sooner McCain can wrap up the nomination, the sooner he can set about mending fences and raising coin while the press are distracted by the Democratic race. It is crucial for McCain that in what will be a tough year for the Republicans, he has everything ready to go for the general before the Democrats settle on their nominee.
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David Lindsay

February 6th, 2008 4:50pm

Everyone is supposed to be terribly "surprised" that Mike Huckabee, the best Democrat in the Republican Party, did so well in the old Democratic states of the South. Why? Sooner or later, the Democrats who have been hoodwinked into voting Republican, and thus into keeping that party in existence, were always going to demand a Presidential nominee who really did agree with them on moral and social issues (which neither Reagan nor either of the Bushes ever showed the slightest practical sign of doing), and who would, moreover, put their economic interests first, as the allegedly leftish Democratic Party stopped doing a very long time ago. And now, that time has come. McCain can choose Giuliani or Lieberman as his running mate. Or he can choose Huckabee. If the former, then I hope, even more than I do anyway, that the Democrats choose John Edwards. The Republicans can then be hounded out of the South and West, about which they have never really cared anyway. Only one person can stop that from happening, and persuade even the most diehard populist to vote Republican one last time before going home to die. That person is Hillary Clinton. She must be stopped.