Things may change after I post this of course, but as of right now, Republican Mike Huckabee has a very good shot at sweeping the Kansas, Louisiana, and shockingly to me, the Washington state primaries tonight. Does that mean the Huckster will win the Republican nomination? Probably not: McCain still has a big lead in delegates, and would still have a good lead even if Huckabee persuaded Mittens.. er.. Mitt Romney to commit his 286 or so delegates to him and the delegates all followed his advice to do so.
What it does mean though is that the Republican conservative base of voters HATE McCain. I don’t doubt that James Dobson’s endorsement (President of Focus On The Family - a very social conservative religious group) of Huckabee the other day helped him immensely in that regard. So, what this does is it stretches out the Republicans nomination process a bit more, and McCain’s coronation isn’t quite on yet. It also means McCain may be forced to name Huckabee as his VP running mate in an attempt to get those social conservatives to vote for him, and if that happens, I think you can sew up the Presidency for the Democrats, no matter who they elect for their candidate., as all the moderates and independents will be scared to death of the religious right theocon Huckster on the ticket.
Oh, I can’t post here without mentioning that Obama also had a pretty darn good night, sweeping Nebraska, Lousiana, and Washington.
A lot of focus is on Huckabee’s picking up delegates in "winner take all" states; but some of the major contests coming up operate on proportional representation. At one point CNN crunched the numbers and stated that even if Huckabee runs the board from here on in, it is next to impossible to overtake John McCain. If conservatives decide to stay home or run a third party candidate in protest, so much the better — it just favours the Democrats.