Mike Huckabee is making a gracious exit from the Republican race as John McCain now has enough delegates to official be the Republican nominee for 2008.
He ran an honorable campaign—perhaps too long of one, but he has the good sense to bow out with a sense of real class. He ran a race he can be proud of, and had some impressive achievements along the way.
I don’t agree with Huckabee’s politics, but he does represent the Christian evangelical conservative movement in a much more accessible way than past leaders. I would like him remain a leader with evangelicals, and I hope he advises the McCain campaign on ways of speaking to middle class Americans.
At last, some modesty in your regards to Huckabee
I’m turning my attention to McCain now, Jay. As a young student, I’ll continue to read your blog to see why McCain is appropriate for the White house.
Don’t fail me; I really do want to like McCain.
No pressure then… 🙂
In all seriousness, I actually supported McCain over Bush in 2000. There are things I dislike about him (campaign finance being by far the biggest), but you can’t discount his life story. What he went through in the Hanoi Hilton all those years was the kind of sacrifice that very few Americans have ever faced.
A few years ago, I got the opportunity to briefly speak with someone who was a fellow POW with McCain. He talked about how McCain never wavered in supporting his fellow POWs, never letting them give up, and never doing anything to dishonor his country.
Political differences do matter, but at least with McCain you know that the differences he has with the party are due to principle. He could have abandoned us on Iraq, but he stuck to his guns. I’ll never like McCain’s stance on campaign finance, but without John McCain there would likely have been no surge in Iraq, and we might well have been watching a triumphant al-Qaeda taking over Iraq right now had it not been for him holding the Washington front.
Don’t worry, I’ll be saying a lot more about Sen. McCain over the course of the year (and hopefully the next four)—and that includes being critical of him when he deserves it. All in all, however, I think McCain will be a solid President and someone who can help the Republican Party rediscover key principles.