Jay Reding.com

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.

Mike Huckabee’s dream is to force a deadlock at the Republican National Convention.

My dream involves Angelina Jolie, Eva Green and and a tropical beach.

Both have about the same odds of happening.

John McCain managed a rout against Mike Huckabee in Virginia, breaking 50% in a red state (with diminished turnout, since most Republicans realize that McCain has a lock on the nomination). While Huckabee’s getting some token protest votes, I honesty don’t understand what Huckabee is doing by the staying in the race. He can’t win, and I have trouble buying the argument that he’s delusional enough to think he can. By running against McCain he squanders the ability to be selected as Vice President. The longer he stays in, the more he seems to marginalize himself.

One the other hand, there is some sense to what Huckabee is doing—by painting himself as an alternative to McCain he can claim to represent the voice of dispossessed evangelicals. But that seems to be a claim without much merit—Huckabee is winning in contests that don’t much matter, and winning by small margins in contests with low turnouts doesn’t say much about Huckabee personally.

Huckabee seems to be burning bridges at this stage. His stubbornness in staying in the race reflects more poorly on him than a magnanimous departure—even one without an endorsement of McCain. Romney’s bowing out was tactically wise and preserves his standing as a potential future candidate. Huckabee’s insistence on running hurts his future chances, which were slim to begin with.

Ultimately, Huckabee’s proven that he’s a liability to the GOP rather than an asset. He could have been a powerful voice for the evangelical community, but the more contests he loses to McCain the more it sends the signal that McCain can win without evangelical votes. If evangelicals throw the race to the Democrats it won’t make them a stronger voice within the party, but inspire a massive backlash that hurts the interests of both evangelical voters and Republicans. Running an opposition candidacy is not a smart way of ingratiating oneself to the party that best fits your political perspective. Huckabee’s Quixotic run is long past its expiration date, and each day he draws things out the more he ends up hurting himself.

UPDATE: So far, Maryland looks like another McCain rout—the margin is above double digits. Huckabee has done well in the South, but that’s all he’s been able to manage. His campaign seems quite pointless, especially now that the major Southern contests are behind us.

Tonight was a good night for John McCain and Barack Obama, and not so good for Hillary Clinton. Captain Ed live-blogged the results as they happened.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in trouble. Obama has all the momentum and is now indisputably the front-runner. Neither Clinton nor Obama have ever run a truly competitive campaign, and Obama’s natural magnetism is giving him a decisive edge. Without her air of inevitability, Clinton is in the fight of her life.

Still, I would not count Hillary out. I don’t at all think that Obama is the superstar that the Democrats have made him out to be. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Obama is in fact the more vulnerable candidate. Obama has two huge problems: he’s incredibly inexperienced, and his appeal is quite literally skin deep. Obama is painting himself as a candidate above politics, but that doesn’t work. Sooner or later Barack Obama will have to stop spouting platitudes and start getting real, and he’s not prepared for that in the slightest. Especially now that it’s clear that McCain will be the GOP nominee, this contest will be one that is about clear differences: the young liberal activist versus the elder statesman and American hero. Sorry, Obamamaniacs, but your guy is all fluff. Either candidate will give McCain a very tough run, and he could blow it, but I think that the Obama hype machine is blowing a great deal of smoke up our collective posteriors.

Still, I do take some comfort in watching the collapse of the Clinton political dynasty. For years we on the right have been excoriated for criticizing the Clintons for being a bunch of amoral hyper-political sleezebags. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are about 15 years behind in realizing it, but it’s nice to know that we’re finally vindicated in that belief. Then again, the way in which the Clintons have gone from liberal paragons to persona non grata is more than a little Orwellian…

This race is going to be quite the interesting one, and even though some conservatives are disappointed that McCain is the nominee, I’m starting to come around to the idea that he’s the best possible candidate for these times. This summer will be quite fun to watch, and hopefully we’ll see some real fireworks—although most of them will be from the intra-party civil war on the Democratic side.

Bill Quick reacts with revulsion to the idea of a McCain-Huckabee ticket in 2008. I’m with him on that. McCain’s biggest liability is with conservative voters, and to have to people on the GOP ticket who lack strong conservative bona fides would be to alienate the vast majority of GOP voters. The GOP has to realize that the times when the GOP has been successful are the times it has embraced small-government values. The GOP won in 1980 because Reagan elucidated a vision of smaller government. The GOP won in 1994 on the basis that the Democratic Party had lost touch with America and that the Contract with America presented another vision of smaller more efficient government.

The GOP needs to wake up, and fast. Congress’ approval ratings are barely in double digit territory. People have as dismal a view of government as they have ever had. If the GOP wants to be the part of slightly less big government rather than the party that will restore sanity and accountability to government, then the GOP will lose once again.

What is the vision of the Republican Party? Is it based upon our principles of economic liberty, personal morality and strong national defense? Or is it nothing more than the mere desire to scrape together enough interest groups to win? If it is the latter, then the GOP has learned nothing from their failures in 2006.

In a time of rampant public distrust of government, putting the architect of McCain-Feingold together with a clone of Jimmy Carter is exactly the wrong strategy. If people want more government, they can vote Democratic this November and get all the government they can handle.

Ronald Reagan said it best: the most dangerous line in the world is “I’m here from the government, and I’m here to help.” The Republican candidates keep invoking the name of Ronald Reagan—but only one of them seemed to understand what he stood for, and that guy isn’t running any longer.

To lose those principles is to not only lose the Republican base, but the independent voters that the GOP needs to win. You don’t win elections by being pale imitations of the other side, you win elections by bolding and proudly defending your principles. A McCain-Huckabee ticket would send exactly the wrong message.