It's not too late for Huckabee and if you bear with me, I'll tell you why.
I just finished watching the Republican Presidential Candidate debate held at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. The debate was moderated by Anderson Cooper. I found myself annoyed during the majority of the debate for several reasons.
1) The debate was not well moderated. John McCain and Mitt Romney were given the most time to answer questions and I think that they both squandered that time by squabbling with each other. I understand that they are the current front-runners but there are four Republican candidates and they were all on the stage. I'm not in the Ron Paul camp but I was aggravated by the way he was ignored in the debate. Very few questions were addressed to him and when he tried to take the floor he was interrupted by Cooper who promised to give him additional opportunities to speak later, a promised that was not kept. And when Rep. Paul was asked an occasional question, he was cut off very quickly. The same was true for Mike Huckabee who did an outstanding job during the debate. Both gentlemen deserved more respect.
2) Snide remarks - McCain and Romney spent too much time battling each other and making snide remarks against the others.
3) Too many long winded answers that didn't make much sense.
If you are in a super Tuesday state, I encourage you to vote for Mike Huckabee. Although he is considered a long-shot now, he still has a shot and is still the best candidate for the job.
Here is an interesting review of tonight's debate from CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider written on the CNN Political Ticker blog.
Huckabee, I think, stood out in this debate as the one who made sense, talked as ordinary people do, and rose above politics. They may have scored. He connected. And that’s a problem for Romney, who would like to become the alternative to John McCain among conservatives who oppose the Arizona senator. But he has very tough competition from Huckabee, who’s forcing people to re-think his run at a time when he was supposed to be out of the game.
But this has always been the way he’s worked: Romney uses money to stay competitive. Huckabee has debates.
I don’t think McCain made many gains – and I think he may have caused people to re-think the race. I don’t think this was his strongest night, not because he was under attack. But because he wasn’t a straight talker. He talked very much like a politician. He was making a lot of charges at Romney – some of which, like the timetable charge, seemed very questionable.
A couple of Romney’s answers were quite good, particularly on the Iraq timetables issue. I don’t think he did himself any harm. But I think the one who really helped himself was Huckabee.
All in all: Huckabee gained ground, McCain probably lost ground, and Romney didn’t help or hurt himself – although he did effectively defend himself. McCain sounded petty – and that’s not the McCain voters know and like.
But to the extent that Huckabee may have made any gains from his performance, Romney’s got bigger worries out of tonight than the Arizona senator.
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