Mike Huckabee will win the GOP nomination for President in 2008

He says Huckabee will carry Iowa and the south. First, the recent jump in polls is across the board for the GOP - except for Mitt Romney. Perhaps this is because of the failure of his speech due to the inevitable comparison to the JFK speech. The point is, the GOP race is extremely close - everyone got a jump in Iowa - Huckabee is getting more attention now because the race is even closer - as are all the candidates. There is no one far in the lead. Huckabee's jump is not from a new wave of supporters - the polls reflects the new closeness of the race. Also, just because Huckabee has a slight edge now in Iowa doesn't mean he will actually win it, nor does it mean that it will carry over to the south. Although voting is affected by other state's voting, Iowa's voting is pretty independent of the south. Iowa is not in the south. Now the "Huckabee's from Arkansas" argument. On Nightly News, NBC's Lisa Myers looked into Huckabee's ethics record, especially when it came to taking gifts. "There's an old saying that it's better to give than to receive," Myers said. "But as governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee seemed to like receiving -- a lot." More Myers: "All the gifts were legal. But over the years, the state ethics commission admonished Huckabee five times for failing to report gifts and for failing to report thousands he paid himself and his family from campaign funds." Information about Huckabee in Arkansas is starting to come out, due to the increased attention. This will make his reputation fall in Arkansas, and if that state is so important to the south as you claim it is, this demising reputation will also affect the rest of the south. Next, he says Huckabee "is currently getting the support of the conservative evangelicals." The Los Angeles Times had a report from earlier this week about how home-schoolers are rallying behind Huckabee. "Huckabee's campaign won't talk much about the home-schooling contingent, which is largely made up of conservative Christians. The staff is weary -- and wary -- of stories that make it seem as though their candidate, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher, relies exclusively on votes and volunteers from the religious right. ‘All I've heard the last week is pastors, pastors, pastors, evangelicals, evangelicals, evangelicals,' said Eric Woolson, who runs the Iowa campaign. Huckabee has the support of the Christian right, fine. But, this will not get him the GOP nomination. The republicans know, and the country knows, that the right faces an uphill battle against the democratic party because the republicans get blamed for Bush's decisions in office along with him. Because the republicans know this, the GOP will nominate the candidate that has the best chance of defeating the Democrats. The GOP will want to win over moderates, not secure its base with the Christian right - they will always vote conservative. The right knows this, and the nomination will not be won by someone that cannot win over moderates nor beat the democrats. Next, he says Romney's playing down of his faith will hurt him. Well, first, Romney really isn't "playing down" his faith. Romney is trying to say that his faith should not affect the conservative vote for him as a presidential candidate. More importantly, fine, it might hurt Romney, but Huckabee's "playing up" of his faith will hurt him as well, and probably worse, because all it does is solidify the votes he's already going to get. His focus on religion will cause him to lose moderates, and those who deliberately do not let religion affect their vote, and those who are of other religious divisions and do let religion affect their vote. Huckabee is a little too focused on religion - he very openly talks about how he "doesn't believe in evolution." Things like that will cause him to lose the crucial vote within the Republican party.