Does Huckster have a chance if he wins one or more Cauc. in the South?

[Vito]

Sorry to sound like C4J, but this article got me thinking...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/02/huckabee_factor_could_sap_romney_in_south/

ATLANTA - As Mitt Romney prepared this week to enter the Super Tuesday contests, he declared confidently that "in a two-person race, I like my chances."
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*

But the problem with Romney's assertion is evident in the South. Romney is not just facing John McCain, but Mike Huckabee, who is running strongly in polls in the four Southern states voting Tuesday, where he has his biggest base of evangelical support.

The Huckabee factor may be getting relatively little attention nationally in the Republican nomination battle because the former Arkansas governor has failed to repeat his Iowa victory. But in a region that has equal or greater evangelical strength than Iowa, Huckabee may become the decisive factor - at Romney's expense.

Voters identifying themselves as evangelicals and Christian conservatives could make up more than half of the Republican electorate in the four Southern states voting Tuesday, analysts said. The contests - out of 21 across the country - are being held in Huckabee's home state of Arkansas as well as Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.

One of Romney's most prominent supporters in Atlanta said in an interview yesterday Romney must peel away Huckabee backers in order to win in the South.

"Our challenge is to get the Huckabee people to defect before next Tuesday," said US Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia. "One of our big obstacles right now is we are splitting votes with Huckabee. It is very frustrating."

The frustration is even greater, Kingston said, because McCain has benefited from Rudy Giuliani's decision earlier this week to drop out of the race, picking up more moderate voters, while Romney is still battling for evangelical conservatives who have been allied with Huckabee.

"Huckabee's presence in the race hurts Romney a lot more than it hurts McCain because I think that Romney would be the second choice of the majority of evangelicals who are going to vote for Huckabee," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Another and perhaps equally important factor that could help McCain is the fact that all four Southern states have open primaries. That means independents and Democrats, who helped the Arizona senator win in New Hampshire and South Carolina, can cross over to support McCain. Since voters don't have to decide until Tuesday which primary they will vote in, it's not clear how big a factor that will be.

Nonetheless, the Romney campaign is hoping for a breakthrough in the South, believing that voters will in the end determine that Huckabee has no chance to become the nominee and move toward Romney as the conservative alternative. If that happens, Kingston said, Romney could get a swell of support by Election Day.

The Southern states could hold the balance of power on Super Tuesday, with a combined prize of 200 delegates, a total greater than that offered by either the 170 of California or the 101 of New York. McCain leads in both those states, while Romney hopes to beat McCain in Massachusetts and Utah.
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Huckabee is expected to win his home state of Arkansas, but the races are less clear elsewhere in the South, especially since former US senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee dropped out of the race. In Alabama and Georgia, candidates can win a sizable chunk of delegates on a winner-take-all basis, meaning that a slim victory can generate big delegate hauls.

A number of polls demonstrate how Huckabee is hurting Romney. Earlier this month, Huckabee was leading throughout the South. In polls taken since McCain won Tuesday's Florida primary and emerged as the putative front-runner, Huckabee's standing has dipped, but he still scored highly.

In the most recent Georgia poll, a Wednesday survey conducted by Insider Advantage, McCain was leading with 35 percent, while Romney and Huckabee were tied at 24 percent. In the group's Tennessee poll, also conducted on Wednesday, McCain was ahead with 33 percent, followed by Huckabee at 25 percent and Romney with 18 percent. The fourth candidate still in the race, Representative Ron Paul, was not a major factor.

The closest contest may be in Georgia, which with 72 delegates offers the most of the four Southern states. The Romney campaign is hoping for a victory in Georgia, having gathered endorsements from several dozen state legislators and the state's largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "In a perilous world, whether the peril is terrorism, global competition or a tanking economy, Mitt Romney is the Republican who inspires confidence in his ability to lead," the newspaper said in endorsing Romney.

Romney's campaign in Georgia has attacked McCain as too liberal on issues such as immigration and taxes. But as of yesterday, Romney had not aired local television commercials and has had little time to campaign in Georgia. Many voters remain relatively unfamiliar with Romney and his stances, according to Kingston. That could be a missed opportunity, analysts said.

"McCain will have support, but a lot of Georgia Republicans intensely disliked his view on the immigration bill," said Merle Black, professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. McCain supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants but has since backed away from the proposal. Black said the "big unknown" of the race is whether Southern voters will have a divide with Romney because of his Mormon faith, which some evangelicals view as a cult, and his conversion on opposing abortion.

The question could be whether Huckabee can consolidate the evangelical vote or whether it will be more evenly split among candidates than in prior contests. Huckabee won sizable percentages of the evangelical vote in Iowa and South Carolina. In Florida, Huckabee split the evangelical vote evenly with McCain and Romney, according to exit polls. If that trend continues in the four Southern states, it could bode well for Romney, his supporters said.

"We have been very encouraged by the exit polls that the evangelicals are supporting us," Romney's son Craig said in an interview at an Atlanta campaign stop Thursday. "It wasn't exactly the case in Iowa, but we have seen very strong support for my dad in the evangelical community and we are very encouraged by that and hope to see more of it in the Southern states."

The Romney campaign announced yesterday that he plans to stump in Georgia on Monday, following visits to Atlanta by McCain today and Huckabee tomorrow. But a prominent Huckabee supporter said Romney's hopes are misplaced.

"I don't think the evangelicals are going to vote for Romney for the most part," said Tommie Williams, majority leader of the Georgia Senate.

Michael Kranish can be reached at [email protected].

[Dr. Dan]

i predict that Huck owns the South, Mccain owns the Blue states and Romney owns the remainder states that aren't south but red states (conservative states).  It might be a close race, but i have a bad feeling that McCain will get this one unless he dies of Melanoma or something.

If McCain wins, Obama and Hitlery will have a better chance of winning the elections...

So we are screwed..

WE can hope, in my opinion, that if mcCain does win, that BLoomberg runs....

It's so ludicrous, but what can i tell you...we're really screwed...  islam is running amuk like nazism did in the 30's...and peopel aren't waking up quickly enough to this virus.

[DownwithIslam]

Lets hope the cancer gets its act together and starts spreading inside this viscous animal.

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

The main reason McCain has had so much success so far is because the "conservative" vote has been so fractured. In the beginning we had Hunter, Tancredo, Romney, Larry Flynt, Huckabee, and Aryan Paul vying for the Republican right. On the left, it was only Giuliani competing with McCain, and he wound up taking as many "conservatives" as he did liberals (because of his tough rhetoric on Iran and terrorism).

Now, the situation is even worse: on the right, we still have Huckabee and Ron Nazi Paul to suck votes from Romney, and an unopposed and universally worshipped McCain.