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.

You had me until you said "when he is named as McCain's running mate, which McCain would be foolish not to do". If you want to get Democrats and Independents to side w/McCain (and you do if you want to win) the WORST way to do it would be to put the Bible-thumping minister on the ticket.

Mr Huckabee, when you said "I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.” does that mean that a vote for McCain-Huckabee is a vote for a new Christian theocracy? Will the Bible replace the Constitution just to make it easier, or perhaps we could add the New Testament in its entirety as an amendment.

McCain is NOT stupid, and while Huck is popular in the south, what McCain needs is a conservative VP that doesn't TOTALLY FRIGHTEN AWAY all independents...

McCain and Huckabee, what a combo!

McCain has pledged to keep American troops in Iraq for the next 100 years if that's how long it takes to cleanse the world of Muslims, and Huckabee is determined to replace the Constitution with the Bible.

Sadly, I would vote for them over Hillary any day. If I'm going to be forced to pray all day long, I'd rather be praying to Jesus than to Hillary.

DoctorJ, why does Huckabee frighten you so much? Most humanitarian and many liberal values are secularised Christian morals, though not all of course- freedom and personal liberty rarely is mentioned, and "so far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others", though not Mike Huckabee, who is clearly a very alert and intelligent man. And not some type of nut case or racist. His tax ideas are loopy I admit.