Carol Platt Liebau: What Huckabee's Doing

Thursday, February 14, 2008

What Huckabee's Doing

Over at Salon, Mike Madden speculates about what Huckabee's doing remaining in the Republican race.

Certainly Huckabee isn't angling for the VP slot. Anyone as politically shrewd as Huckabee obviously is knows that McCain can't choose him, even if he wanted to. Given that McCain has already alienated important conservative constituencies in the economic conservative community by voting against the President's tax cuts, the last thing he needs is a veep who calls the Club for Growth the Club for Greed -- and who's infuriated all Mitt Romney's supporters by double-teaming with McCain to knock Romney out of the race.

As I noted in my Townhall column:

[Huckabee]'s remaining in the race for another reason. By raising his delegate count above Mitt Romney’s, second only to McCain’s, Huckabee may well hope that he is establishing himself as the putative frontrunner the next time a Republican presidential field assembles.

Along with that status, of course, comes a lot of other goodies -- perhaps, as Madden mentions, a show on the Fox News Channel . . . and certainly more well-paying speaking gigs. No one can begrudge Huckabee trying to enhance his earning potential, but at what price? His decision to fly to the Caymans to deliver a speech is an implicit recognition on his own part that he isn't going to capture the nomination.

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