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

By NANCY GIBBS Nancy Gibbs – 28 mins ago

The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise.

Inspirational words have brought him a long way – including to the night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that we “join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”

By now there are surely more callouses on his lips than his hands. He, like every new president, has reckoned with both the power and the danger of words, dangers that are especially great for one who wields them as skillfully as he. A promise beautifully made raises hopes especially high: we will revive the economy while we rein in our spending; we will make health care simpler, safer, cheaper, fairer. We will rid the earth of its most lethal weapons. We will turn green and clean. We will all just get along.

So when reality bites, it chomps down hard. The Nobel committee cited “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” His critics fault some of those efforts: those who favor a missile shield for Poland or a troop surge in Afghanistan or a harder line on Iran. But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have.

Maybe the prize will give him more power, new muscles to haul unruly nations in line. But peacemaking is more about ingenuity than inspiration, about reading other nations’ selfish interests and cynically, strategically exploiting them for the common good. Will it help if fewer countries come to the table hating us? To a point. But it’s a starting point, not an end in itself.

At this moment many Americans are longing for a president who is more bully, less pulpit. The president who leased his immense inaugural good will to the hungry appropriators writing the stimulus bill, who has not stopped negotiating health care reform except to say what is non-negotiable, whose solicitude for the wheelers and dealers who drove the financial system into a ditch leaves the rest of us wondering who has our back, has always shown great promise, said the right things, affirmed every time he opens his mouth that he understands the fears we face and the hopes we hold. But he presides over a capital whose day-to-day functioning has become part-travesty, part-tragedy, wasteful, blind, vain, petty, where even the best intentioned reformers measure their progress with teaspoons. There comes a time when a President needs to take a real risk – and putting his prestige on the line to win the Olympics for his home town does not remotely count.

Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, who the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former army Medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan – a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress.

Sometimes the words come first. Sometimes, it’s better to let actions speak for themselves.

Here’s a pot pourri of polls from newsrooms around the country talking about Obama’s sliding numbers.

I also heard two Democrat pollsters on Hannity’s radio show discussing Obama’s disastrous handling of his Presidency. They are predicting a tsunami at the polls in 2010. Both saying they have never seen people this angry!

Thank goodness the voters have awakened from their slumber and are now fighting back.

~~John Cronin~~

Krauthammer’s Take [NRO Staff]

From last night’s “All-Stars.”

On prospective GOP candidates for 2012:

Romney really is the frontrunner. He has done himself well. He is a grown-up. He knows economics. He’s trusted on that.

There is also a tradition among Republicans of nominating the next in line, as we did with George Bush, Sr. in 1988, Dole in ’96, and McCain in ’08, sort of the last grown-up who was left over from the last campaign.

And I think that Romney has done well. Look, he is the guy who is as clean as clean can get. You are not going to wake up in the morning and discover he is crying in Argentina. This is a solid guy and he’s got a record.

Now, as to Palin, I agree entirely with what Mara said. She is—she has star power without any doubt. She has an extremely devoted following. But she is not a serious candidate for the presidency.

She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work.

It could work for eight weeks if you’re the number two candidate, as she was last year. But even so, she got singed a lot in that campaign. You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.