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Mike Huckabee may be ready to help John McCain bypass the remaining hurdles standing between him and the Republican presidential nomination by becoming his Vice-Presidential running mate as part of a “dream ticket”.
On the back of Mr Huckabee’s Super Tuesday victories, Mr McCain is said to be considering asking the Baptist preacher to run alongside him in the November election — potentially quelling a growing revolt by the party’s social conservatives.
Mr Huckabee, an evangelical who is a former Arkansas governor with impeccable socially conservative credentials, did not rule out the prospect yesterday, saying that nobody ever turned down the chance to become Vice-President. If he did land on the Republican ticket Mr McCain would have a man who does not believe in evolution as his running-mate.
Mr Huckabee won Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia and his home state of Arkansas, victories that left Mitt Romney badly wounded. Mr Romney was meeting advisers last night to discuss whether he should drop out of the race.
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Mr Huckabee and Mr McCain, who openly despise Mr Romney, appear strange bedfellows but genuinely like each other. Indeed, without Mr Huckabee’s unexpected victory in Iowa on the back of huge support among evangelicals, Mr Romney could well have won there and destroyed Mr McCain’s chances of resurrecting his campaign.
“I’ve got to say Mitt Romney was right about one thing — this is a two-man race,” Mr Huckabee said. “He was just wrong about who the other man in the race was. It’s me, not him.” He added: “The conservatives are in the South, and the conservative base of the Republican party, I’m winning it. And there’s just no way to argue \ that.”
Mr Romney, trying to fan the flames of the conservative revolt against Mr McCain in recent days, has tried to portray himself as the Right’s standard bearer and the conservative alternative to the Arizona senator. That strategy appears to have failed badly in the face of Mr Huckabee’s far stronger appeal to religious voters.
Mr McCain racked up big victories across the country, including New York, California, Illinois, Arizona and New Jersey, making him the clear favourite to wrap up the nominating battle. He announced yesterday the cancellation of a planned trip to Europe this week, which included a scheduled meeting with Gordon Brown, because he wanted to close the deal with Republicans “as quickly as possible”.
However, in Tuesday’s elections he failed to secure backing from conservatives, and he remains dogged by questions over his ability to win in deeply Republican Southern states - the bedrock of the party’s support in a general election.
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In his victory rally he claimed the mantle of frontrunner but congratulated Mr Huckabee on his triumph across the South.
Mr Huckabee’s continued presence has robbed Mr Romney of crucial votes throughout the Republican race. The former Massachusetts governor was even expecting to win West Virginia on Tuesday but supporters of Mr McCain and Mr Huckabee joined forces to rob him of victory.
Mr McCain has always been distrusted by conservatives because of his previous stances on taxation, political funding and his support for giving illegal immigrants a chance of citizenship. In recent days, however, the conservative ferment has reached near-hysteria — despite the fact that Mr McCain has been consistently anti-abortion, deplores runaway spending and is a national security hawk.
Anne Coulter, the bestselling conservative commentator and one of the shrillest and most merciless opponents of Democrats, even went so far as to say that she would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than Mr McCain in a general election.
James Dobson, founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, said: “Should Senator McCain capture the nomination, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life.”
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Mr Huckabee is socially conservative but worries fiscal conservatives. They accuse him of raising some taxes while governor of Arkansas, and on the campaign trail, he has sounded a distinctly populist tone on the economy, decrying the loss of jobs overseas and sounding warnings about the unchecked free market.