There has been precious little commentary on just how smart it is of Huckabee to keep on running despite the fact that a McCain nomination is numerically inevitable. Here’s why. First, when McCain does cross the magic nomination number it will be perceived not as a coronation but as fairly won. Second, the continuation of Huckabee in the race gives a core Republican constituency a continuing voice. It prevents them from just staying home and nursing their grievances; it keeps them involved. Third, it keeps an interest in the Republican race that otherwise would have none. If nothing else, the media, just in the name of fairness, must continue to report on developments not only in the Democratic race, which surely is the more suspenseful and therefore the more exciting one, but in the Republican race as well, even if the excitement there is manufactured. We are told by certain reporters that the McCain camp no longer considers Huckabee’s seemingly quixotic continuing race “funny.” Well it never was funny. It was and continues to be very smart politics and should be recognized as such. This is particularly so since Huckabee has managed to keep his continuing pursuit of what numerically can’t be his so very civilized and filled with good humor. There have been no personal attacks by either candidate on the other. In the meantime Huckabee is assuring that the voters in the remaining races get a good look at them both. Thus the result, when he is named as McCain’s running mate, which McCain would be really politically foolish not to do, the Republican party will be able to come together behind both candidates. In my telephone calling for one of the Democratic candidates, I reached an old geezer in the State of Washington. He was furious that he could not have a ticket consisting of Obama/Huckabee or alternatively the other way around. Those were the only two that made sense to him. He certainly was hearing something that voters in each party were also hearing. Both have run most unusual grass roots campaigns. So the liberals should not be arrogantly dismissing Huckabee as some bad joke as so many do. Need one say that they would be ashamed to say about any ethnic group or any gender what they have no qualms about saying about an evangelical Christian, without bothering to listen and certainly without hearing many of the things he is saying. What they forget in their scorn, among many other things, is that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the few totally principled and astonishingly courageous of the small group of Nazi resisters, killed by them in the last days of WWII was also an evangelical Christian pastor.

For purposes of full disclosure I am a Barak Obama supporter.