This is the strongest indication indication to date that Mike Huckabee will not run for President in 2012.  ANY Presidential candidate would not let go of their South Carolina team unless they are not running.  I’ve said for a long time that Mike is not running.  He has a cruise scheduled in June and is building a 3 million dollar home in Florida, and, has a very nice paying job with Fox News that will pay the bills on that new mortgage.

We’ve been told that former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee, a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is giving his former S.C. supporters the nod to seek work on other presidential campaigns. The word is that he’s told South Carolina staffers that they have his blessing for them to peddle their wares elsewhere. If this is as true as it appears, it’s the second major shakeup. Monday, Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour surprised everyone but himself when he announced that he would not seek the GOP nod.

It also means that two Southerners that were considered major contenders are gone from consideration. Huckabee had a strong effort in South Carolina during the last run, and would have been a favorite to win the primary if he had fully committed to a run. Barbour has good credentials from his period as governor, and enough political and monetary connections to win as well, but he decided the time wasn’t right for him.

So, how does that affect the playing field here? Obviously, U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich is the presumptive No. 1, in that he has a record and the money and the organization to outlast most other candidates. And in therms of how we see the race right now, Donald Trump rises to second. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum are also moving up the chart.

Now, we’re beginning to get to an uncomfortable examination of the Republican field. Coming off tea party excitement and the 2010 wins, there is a paltry amount of what any nonpartisan person would call serious candidates. Part of the reason is the nature of the campaign at this point. There hasn’t been a lot put into building the physical manifestation of the campaigns — renting office space, hiring staff and buying media. Most of what’s happening now is earned media, and the support of a candidate requires nothing more than liking what you just heard on television.

When the going gets tough, we’ll see whether Trump, Bachmann and Santorum can step up with serious efforts. Whether they can get people waking up early on Saturday mornings to go to rallies, knock on doors and man phone banks. Whether they can raise the money to compete. Because if the bloom comes off the rose around December, the people committed to winning and not saying pithy things on cable television are going to be in a good position.

Original Article found here.

ARG SC Poll: Romney Runs Strong! Trails Huck By 2

From Doug at RightSpeak.com

Mike Huckabee and a surprisingly strong Mitt Romney are the leading candidates in the South Carolina 2012 GOP primary according to a new ARG poll released today. Huckabee leads Romney by a scant 2%, in a state many pundits view as a must-win for the Fox News star should he consider another run in 2012. Huck leads overall with 20%, Romney is second at 18%. With a margin of error of 4%, the state is a “jump ball” between the former 2008 GOP rivals. Media stars Donald Trump and Sarah Palin round out the top four spots, with 13% and 10% respectively.

Huckabee gains the most support from Republicans overall and those identified at Tea Party supporters, placing first with 23% and 18% with each group. Romney runs second with the GOP at 16% and third with the Tea Party at 12%. Trump scores second with the Tea Party – at 16%, which drives his overalll GOP score. Palin’s support is steady at 10% accross all groups.

South Carolina is not currently viewed as being a strong state for Romney in 2012. The state, with a strong Evangelical base, is considered by many to be a Huckabee strong hold. With fellow Sothern Governor, Mississippi’s Haley Barbour considering a run, the Palmetto State was not being looked at as fertile ground for Romney. However, the ARG poll shows Romney running very competitively across the board and Barbour posting a soggy 2% level of support overall. Palin was at one time thought to be a strong player in South Carolina, with a high percentage of residents being military veterans and armed services families. Her performance in this poll reflects a significant decline in support she has also seen on the nation level.

Romney does extremely well with Independent voters and those who are definitely going to vote.  South Carolina has an open primary and Romney garners 26% of the Indie voters to Huckabee’s 11%. Both men are tied with those who are definite to vote at 19%.  Of those who will probably vote, Huckabee leads Romney 25% to 16%.

While polls this early in the election cycle are subject to wild fluctuations, today’s numbers do poke holes in the “conventional wisdom” the South is Huckabee territory where Romney can’t run. Clearly, as in the recent numbers from Iowa, Mitt Romney is running a lot stronger than assumed.

If you haven’t yet heart the radio clip of Glenn Beck referring to Huckabee as a “Progressive” you can do so here.  When one of Huckabee’s most avid and passionate supporters, who goes by the name of TexasConservative at RightSpeak.com, posted Huckabee’s response to Glenn Beck earlier this week I told him that this was a very petty thing that Huckabee did in attacking at Glenn, especially for someone potentially running for President.  Not only did he attack back (I don’t really feel like Beck was making an attack in the first place) but he took the angle of character assassination by referring to Beck as a “Conspiracy Theorist” who is the only one with the views he expresses on his show.

Glenn Beck has a very large following and the last thing Huckabee should have done in this instance is make Glenn his enemy.  Glenn’s response is both brilliant and articulate.  He debunks a lie Huckabee told, something about Glenn referring to him as a Nazi, and he details why Huckabee is progressive by using facts about his record.

Earlier this week, Glenn said that he was not excited about the possibility of a Mike Huckabee presidency and said that he felt that politically, Huckabee was a progressive. Mike Huckabee did not take kindly to the comments, and responded to Glenn on Huckabee’s website. Glenn addressed those comments on radio this morning, and explained why he said what he said:

Glenn derides Mike Huckabee for being a progressive, for being like McCain, for raising taxes and for “overreaching.”

From Nate Gunderson at Race42012:

National Journal Magazine has a new political “insiderss” poll out today showing that both Republican and Democrat insiders believe that Romney will be the strongest candidate to face Obama.   You can see the Republican insiders overwhelmingly gave Romney their confidence.

Mitt Romney Ranks as Strongest Candidate to Go Against Obama

Q: Who would be the Republicans’ strongest presidential nominee in 2012?

Democrats (111 votes)

Rank/Candidate
1. Mitt Romney 29 percent
2. John Thune 15 percent
3. Tim Pawlenty 13 percent
4. Mitch Daniels 11 percent
5. Newt Gingrich 6 percent
6. Haley Barbour 5 percent
6. Jeb Bush 5 percent
8. Mike Huckabee 3 percent
8. Bobby Jindal 3 percent
8. Sarah Palin 3 percent

Also receiving votes: Dick Cheney, 2 percent; Michael Bloomberg, Eric Cantor, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Colin Powell, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, no one, 1 percent each.

Romney

“He can raise money, has something of a national base, has been around the presidential block, can talk about the economy, looks good on TV, and handles himself well.”

Q: Please rank the top five candidates, 1 through 5, in terms of who you think is most likely to capture the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Republicans (109 votes)

Rank/Candidate/Insiders Index*
1. Mitt Romney 81
2. Tim Pawlenty 46
3. John Thune 38
4. Haley Barbour 28
5. Mitch Daniels 25
5. Sarah Palin 25
7. Newt Gingrich 14
7. Mike Huckabee 14
9. Jeb Bush 6
10. Bobby Jindal 5

*METHODOLOGY: All 127 Republicans among National Journal’s Political Insiders were asked to name and rank the top five contenders for their party’s 2012 presidential nomination; 109 participated. In tallying the rankings, a first-place vote was worth 5 points, a second-place vote 4 points, and so on. The Insiders Index reflects the percentage of points that each contender received out of the maximum possible. For example, Mitt Romney scored an Index rating of 81, meaning he received 81 percent of the possible 545 points, the number he would have had if all 109 participants had ranked him first.

Romney

“In a downturn, trading a community organizer for a businessman may seem like a no-brainer.”

Mark B. Lowe over at Race42012.com gave this analysis:

My analysis: The first thing that leaps out at me is the questions. It is not, “Whom would you vote for”, or ,”Whom would you like to see”? The question to the Democrats was, “Whom would be the strongest opponent”? The question to the Republicans was, “Who is the most likely to obtain the nomination”? Note the difference? None of this “favorables” touchy-feely stuff.

The second thing that strikes me is the term “political insiders”. The grass roots like to sneer at them, but it has long been my experience that the middle layers of any organization are the ones who really run things. They are the ones that make things work in spite of the ravings from the top. The top determine policy. The middle actually sees that it gets done in spite of the top echelon in many cases. So don’t blame them for the policy screw-ups during the Bush years.

These are not part-time political junkies. These are the guys whose very jobs and careers depend on their political judgment. If outsiders such as us call a political shot wrong, we lose face. If they call a political shot wrong, they lose their jobs.

The final thing that strikes me is that I pretty much agree with them. As I see it now, the two people most likely to win the nomination are Pawlenty and Romney. They are the ones making the right moves in order to lay a foundation for a successful run. Huckabee and Palin are acting more like celebrities than candidates. If they are truly going to run, I see them making the same mistakes now that ultimately cost Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson the nomination last time.

Mitt and Ann Romney were recently by Fox News’ Gretchen.  That interview will air on Wedsnesday.  Here are some excerpts of what Governor Romney had to say about his plans for 2012.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he will decide after the 2010 Congressional elections whether to take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, ran as a pro-life candidate against eventual nominee John McCain.

Romney is one of several Republicans considering a bid against Obama and consistently polls in the top three in most surveys of Republicans and American voters.

He has ranked as one of the top potential candidates along with pro-life former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

In a new interview with Fox News slated to air Wednesday, Romney discusses his plans.

“It’s always a possibility, and you keep the options open, but, you concentrate on the task ahead, for me that’s trying to get some good people elected in 2010,” he says on the Fox News program “Fox and Friends.”

“And, I know once that’s done the next item on the agenda is what’s 2012 going to be; and, Ann and I will give that some thought and make the decision then,” he added.

Appearing like a candidate, or at least an advocate for “change” in 2010, Romney voiced criticism of Obama, saying he has governed from the left when he pledged to be a moderate.

“I had higher hopes for him,” Romney said. “I knew he was a smart individual — I thought that he would learn that governing from the middle was the right way to go, as president Clinton learned his second term, but he’s made a lot of the mistakes that ideologues often do, which is thinking that everybody in the country voted for their extreme agenda.”

Romney also talked about Palin in the interview on the Fox News show and diffused rumors that she may consider a third-party presidential bid.

“I don’t know what her plans are but my expectation is that she’ll stay in the Republican party,” he said.

“Look, she’s a great, energizing member of the party. She has good ideas that have galvanized a lot of support for the party and she’s a welcome addition,” he added.

During the campaign, Romney said he is pro-life on abortion and went as far as endorsing the overturning of Roe v. Wade so states can again protect women and unborn children from abortion.

However, the former governor came under fire from some quarters for his state health care plan, which includes taxpayer-funded abortions. Romney countered that the state Supreme Court required abortion funding under the program.

A Gallup survey asked Republicans to say whether they would like any of several potential presidential candidates.

Some 71 percent of Republicans say they would seriously consider voting for Huckabee while the same 65 percent say they would consider Romney or Palin, both of whom ran as pro-life candidates in 2008.

A previous Rasmussen poll found 29% of Republican voters nationwide say Huckabee is their pick to represent the GOP in the 2012 presidential campaign.

The survey had 24 percent preferring Romney and 18% would cast their vote for pro-life former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The full interview is set to air on Wednesday but Fox was able to give us a peak into their interview with Ann:

I sure wish Evangelicals For Mitt had the option on commenting on their posts.  I say we all send Nancy and David French e-mails requesting they do so because there are a number of posts that seem like they are designed for commenting but no one can do so.  That’s not a true blog!

At any rate, David created a post with a few questions for 2010, which I would like to respond to on his blog, but again, no option to do so.  David has a few prediction of his own and I’d like to see what other’s perspectives are on what David had to say and how things will go for Huckabee, Palin, Romney and Obama.

Here is an excerpt from David French’s post:

(2) How much longer before Mike Huckabee goes after Sarah Palin with both barrels? Right now Huckabee is reeling, but a politician doesn’t go to the pages of the Washington Post to defend his horrific clemency record when he intends to go gently into that good night. I will give one prediction: Mike Huckabee will attempt a political comeback. But Sarah Palin will stand in his way. Her poll numbers are strengthening, she’s an Evangelical Christian, and she has one huge advantage over Huckabee (and no, it’s not her looks): She’s actually conservative.

If there’s one thing we learned about Mike Huckabee, it’s that the (former) pastor has a thin skin and some sharp claws. In time he’ll learn he can’t beat Mitt Romney unless he first beats Sarah Palin. Good luck with that, Governor.

If I could respond to David, I would tell him that I think he is spot on with his prediction of Palin and Huckabee, and the difficulty a Palin run would cause to a Huckabee campaign.  I actually did a post not too long ago titled “Huckabee’s greatest fear for 2012 -Sarah Palin” in which I stated pretty much the same things that David in his article quoted above, and how I think Mitt will benefit from it.

Please, share your prediction and don’t be afraid to speculate.  Speculation is really fun!  So let’s have fun with this.

Politico has this article out on how Conservatives unleashed heck on Mike Huckabee for granting clemency to the man accused of killing 4 police officers just nine years after clemency was granted.

The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend.

Maurice Clemmons, whom Huckabee granted clemency to nine years ago, remained at large after local police in Lakewood, Wash. mistakenly thought they had him trapped in a house early Monday. Clemmons is reported to have shot the officers as they were sitting at a table in a local coffee shop.

While many details of the murders were still unclear Monday, leading online conservative voices were quick to pass judgment on Huckabee, whose 2008 presidential campaign was forced to respond to accusations that he was too lenient with violent criminals during his years as governor.

“The man being sought by police was granted clemency by former GOP Arkansas Mike Huckabee despite his violent history and vehement protestations from prosecutors and victims’ family members,” wrote conservative Michelle Malkin on her widely read blog. “This disaster is just one of Huckabee’s ill-considered clemency legacies.”

“This isn’t Huckabee’s first Horton moment,” Malkin continued, referring to the convicted murderer who raped a woman during a weekend furlough program supported by then-Massachusetts governor and later Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Willie Horton was featured prominently in damaging ads from George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign painting the Massachusetts Democrat as soft on crime.

On his conservative RedState blog, Erick Erickson wrote that the shooting “is going to be extremely problematic for Governor Huckabee.”

Read the rest here.

There has been much debate regarding who has the greatest shot at winning the Republican nomination in 2012.  There have also been many polls indicating who the considered front runners are -Romney, Palin and Huckabee.  Tim Pawlenty has also been considered, but is not showing well in any of the polling.

But there is one candidate, who was regarded by many as the “spoiler” of the last Republican primary, and that was Mike Huckabee.  Huckabee basically handed the nomination over to McCain when he played the religion card enabling him to take Iowa out from under Romney’s feet (just 1 month prior to the Iowa Caucus Romney held 31 percent in the polling) when he started targeting his fellow Evangelicals as well as his bigoted Mormon comment that ” don’t Mormons believe satan and Jesus are brothers?”

When I saw this excerpt from Sarah Palin’s interview with Greta Van Sustern, I got very eager to see her run for the Presidency, but not because I want her to be President, nor because I think she is qualified.  I want her to run because she will cut very deeply into Mike Huckabee’s base, and vise versa, which would allow Romney to skate through unscathed as Palin and Huckabee battle each other for the same votes.

Here’s the interview with Greta:

VAN SUSTEREN: How — I mean, you haven’t said you’re going to run. And I’m not going to (INAUDIBLE) but I mean, in the back of your mind, you must think, How can I reach the people who don’t agree with me?

PALIN: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK? I mean, it’s easy to reach the people that agree with you. How do you reach the people who are a little farther to the left and way far to the left from you?

PALIN: I think that those people are going to start seeing that the direction of our country right now has got to change. And whether they agree with me personally on my values or the — some of the issues that I really grabbed hold of and tried to progress with — whether they agree with that or not, I think what they’re going to agree with is that we have to build a stronger nation economically and in terms of national security.

And the things that I’m standing for, they’re such common sense measures that have to be undertaken in order to get there for America with national security, with the economy. I think they’re going to be agreeing with that. But I’m never going to please everyone. There’s no — there’s no need to even try to please everyone. Some people will — if it comes from me, they’ll automatically not like what the idea is or what the position is.

VAN SUSTEREN: So how do you win over the people that don’t — I mean, who may have that sort of kneejerk reaction, if you want to — if you want to talk to them, if you want to reach them, at least have them consider what you have to say?

PALIN: Well, for instance, the book is a good tool to get — hey, read the book, and if you still don’t like the positions that I take or if you don’t like who I am after reading the book, unfiltered through the media, then so be it. You know, I’m never going to win you over. But at least give me a shot there in trying to figure out who I am, what my record is, what my accomplishments are and what I represent.

And then, Greta, if I can’t please them, I can’t please them. I’m not going to try. I’m not going to change who I am or compromise my positions, my values, in order to placate or to try to get some demographic or some group of people on board with me if they just don’t get it.

Is there any doubt after reading this that Palin IS indeed running for President in 2012?  This dividing of the Evangelical base could be just enough for Romney to compete very well in Iowa as well as to pull out a win there.  Nonetheless, Romney will win New Hampshire, then Michigan, which would give him to big wins in a row, then he would move on to take Nevada, as he did last go around.  By then, Iowa will have been forgotten about.  Romney may just have enough momentum with 3 wins in a row to take South Carolina, as that will be a state that Huckabee and Palin will be siphoning away each others voters.

Romney will then win Florida, as he would have last time had McCain not lied about Romney calling for a timetable for withdrawl in Irag, then move on to take CA then the rest is history folks….we have our highly qualified nominee.

I was on Race42008 the other day when there was a conversation going on about Romney and Huckabee.  The comments section was flooded with Anti-Mormon comments to the degree that many people, almost all of them non-Mormon, we requesting that these folks be banned for bigotry.

These are the followers that Mike Huckabee attracts folks!  Mike Huckabee, as bigot himself,  has no place leading anything in American politics.  He should give heed to these words from Ronald Reagan:

Also check out Palin’s interview with Billy Graham and you tell me Mike Huckabee is not crapping in his pants right now: http://www.billygraham.org/News_Article.asp?ArticleID=730