Richard Whalen

Mike Huckabee defied all expectations on Tuesday by winning Alabama, his home state Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia and most important, Georgia.

“You know, over the past few days a lot of people have been trying to say that this is a two-man race,” he told supporters in Little Rock. “Well you know what? It is. And we’re in it!”

And Huckabee’s campaign manager Chip Saltsman added: “It gives us a lot of momentum, going forward. I think we go forward with a lot more money than we thought we were going to have,” and also indicated Huckabee was not angling for the vice presidential slot.

Huckabee, who spent two decades as a Baptist preacher and television advertising director for evangelists, speaks in familiar Southern cadences, plays the guitar and with calm dignity, makes a class-based populist argument against the “uncaring rich.” In Iowa, he showed flashes of genuine anger at Romney’s self-centered, self-financed campaign.

Huckabee is a “Walmart conservative,” a group bound to grow in the present deepening economic crisis. He shows sincere empathy for the money worries of working-class and lower-middle class families. In his quiet-spoken manner, sharp wit and folksy appeal, he evokes memories of Harry Truman of Missouri early in his presidency.

The war between Mitt Romney and Huckabee takes away the glow of John McCain’s sweep and continues to fuel the anger among Republican conservative voters. According to Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, “Tonight’s results do not benefit Romney – no matter how his enthusiastic supporters in the blogosphere might try to spin it.” His advisers concede that Romney faces a steep climb to the nomination because of simple delegate math. And the math is daunting with Romney now facing a shortfall that would require that he win almost every remaining primary this year.

Romney is on the record for calling on Huckabee to quit the race so that he could battle McCain, perceived as an anathema to many conservative Republicans, one-on-one. Michael Luo and Adam Nossiter, report in the New York Times (2/6/08) that Romney’s advisers hope “the upshot of the grass-roots anger and a divided delegate picture is that they will be able to derail at least temporarily the rush to crown McCain as the nominee.”

On Tuesday, James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, released a blistering statement about McCain, saying he could not in good conscience vote for the senator. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh, another Romney ally, also condemned McCain for his “disgraceful, dirty little trick” in releasing a private letter to him from Robert Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, reports Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal. In the letter, “Mr. Dole invoked Mr. McCain’s years as a Vietnam prisoner of war and vouched for Mr. McCain’s conservatism. ‘Whoever wins the Republican nomination will need your enthusiastic support,’ Dole wrote Limbaugh. ‘Two terms for the Clintons are enough.’”

Despite all of the Romney-McCain bitterness and attacks, I do not think this personal divisiveness will have long-term ramifications for McCain because he has proven he can win without conservative Republicans. And by the time we get to November 2008, even the Limbaughs will vote for McCain rather than see a Clinton or Obama in the White House. My bet right now is a McCain-Huckabee ticket.