Mike Huckabee is an egoist

I've explained how the party system works. Whether or not his winning is impossible, he still has a number of delegates from many states which will still give a voice to his supporters on the floor. Huckabee is a religious man. Religious men are given all sorts of Martyrs as role models. If he is going to be a political martyr for his people, good for him. He's likely not doing it because he's an egotist. Unless you want to call every person that assumes they have a special relationship with God, or carry a part of God's message with them, or God has a plan for them an egotist. Which, I'm actually fine with you doing that, but that's not why you're calling Huckabee an egotist. You're calling him an egotist because he's remained a candidate for President. The religious right may not support McCain in the general. It is likely, however, that they will choose someone with a perfect record on being pro-life over a person that is decidedly pro-choice. If the McCain campaign, or the national party manages to gravely offend the religious right they actually might boycott the election. Snub the religious right, and they might just decide to pull one of those Ross Perot type of stunts, and remind the party exactly what their platform needs to be. Perot in 92 brought about a pledge from the Republicans in 94 that they would balance the budget. Granted, they just consented to the efforts of the Administration, and tried to take credit for it, but okay, the fiscal conservatives got their wish, and they lined up right behind Dole in 96, and the party's crisis was resolved. Handle this wrong, and the Republican Party could throw away the 2008 election. A unified front now, nine months before the election won't bring about any more support in the general. The general will be won in the last three or four weeks of the election. Period. The public memory isn't that great, and the base is going to vote no matter what, unless you manage to clearly piss a large portion of it off. The funny thing about winning election is usually no one analysis why you said you won to see if it was true. Carl Rove will say, "We won because we turned out the base!" which can't be true in an election with record turnouts for both parties. It does, however, make it appear as if your party was superior, or at the very least that your challengers were inferior, and couldn't even turn out their base to win. Politics is funny about things like that, but believe me what happens now within the Republican Party does not impede the candidates chance in the general. In fact, it might help the candidate to have someone else representing a different side of the Republican Party at the convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where the anti-Republican demonstration is going to be pretty significant. His support then will mean more than it does now. Romney was going to remain in the race, but some of his supporters what him to be able to run for the office again in the future and it's more likely that he'd irritate support he'll need in the future that McCain is garnering now, than the support that Huckabee is currently brandishing. I know Senator Edwards personally, and I consider him to be a charlatan. He spent a lot of time talking about the importance of his message, and how he was going to carry a banner to the end. And in the course of one flight he changed his mind, and stabbed his supporters and staff in the heart. I sincerely doubt that he ever stood for one ounce of what he spoke of. He is a multimillionaire, and by that I mean he is worth tens of millions of dollars, and ran around talking about middle class values. He'd tell a story about how he grew up believing that people were people, and not what they did for a living, and a few minutes later he'd pop out the sentence "I'm the son of a mill worker, I came from dirt!" So, I guess he grew up in a place where the working class was dirt. He also said more than a few times, "I'm not worried about my kids. My kids are set for life! I'm worried about your kids." And I don't think I can forget the fact that the biggest benefactor for his non-profit that pays for books and tuition for college is the amount he writes off from his taxes. Not to mention, in spite of the pledge put forth by Senator Dodd's campaign that all of the Democratic candidates signed on to stating that none of their out of state staff, as in living in Iowa for the expressed purpose for working for the candidate, would Caucus, the Edwards campaign specifically order any of their staff which were "legal residents" (In Iowa you only have to live here for ten days to register) to caucus. John Edwards, the profiteering lawyer who thinks he's a champion of the middle class in spite of never doing anything as a Senator to support them, is hardly a good example of an ethical or principled politician. I significantly doubt that Huckabee is aiming for a VP bid, but if that's what the party wants, it's what the part gets. Huckabee already has a large fundraising base nationally if he were going to attempt to run a Senate race or a House race, he'd be better off leaving the Presidential election sooner so that he can actually run for that seat. I'm not sure when Alabama has their primaries, but I bet it happens in the late spring. I think he just doesn't want to let his supporters down.