February 05, 2008
First Winner Of The Day!
UPDATED.
Mike Huckabee became Super Tuesday's first winner after cleaning up West Virginia's 18 delegates in that state's close GOP nominating convention. The sniping has already started over the legitimacy of Huckabee's win.
Mitt Romney's campaign reacted to his loss by lashing out at main rival John McCain, accusing him of colluding with Huckabee at the convention.
"Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain's inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney's campaign of conservative change," said campaign manager Beth Myers.
Huckabee sealed his win, AP reports, when delegates backing Ron Paul and McCain broke for him, after it became clear in the first round of voting that their guy would be eliminated anyway.
"But when McCain was knocked out, didn't his supporters have to go somewhere?" asks Jim Geraghty, of the pro-Romney National Review. "If they had decided to go for Romney, would that have been considered 'collusion' between McCain and Romney?"
In other words, isn't this how nominating conventions/caucuses work? It is.
And wasn't it Romney who dismissed "whining" in politics yesterday? His target then: Huckabee.
By the way, more than 1,000 convention attendees voted in West Virginia today. Another nine district-level delegates will be up for grabs when state residents vote in a winner-take-all primary on May 13. (See the breakdown of today's results here.)
Huckabee, Romney and Paul all stopped in the state today to personally appeal for the delegates. McCain sent a surrogate, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, to speak before the convention.
Romney came in second place, with McCain in third. Huckabee's best chances are in his native South, where he's a real challenge to Romney for religious conservatives. That's prompted Romney to complain -- dare we say, whine? -- that Huckabee should just get out of the race because they're splitting that vote.
As we noted yesterday, however, it seems more likely that Huckabee's supporters would go to McCain. There's a reason they settled on Huckabee and not Romney; Huckabee's absence probably doesn't change the anti-Romney calculus for them.
[UPDATE 4:56] Here's polling evidence to back up that claim.
Posted at 4:31 PM
Posted to:
Campaigns, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, WH 2008
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