Huckabee should stay in

What is extremely amusing is that some self-styled conservatives are calling for Huckabee to drop out, saying that he owes it to the conservative movement to stop McCain.

Let's see -- this is the same group of conservative pundits and PAC's who torpedoed Huckabee's campaign by savagely painting his record in the worst light while ignoring all of Mitt Romney's failings as a conservative. Their point was that Huckabee was a liberal -- so why are they worrying about whether Huckabee will take votes from Romney? If McCain and Huckabee are evil twin liberals, then they should split the evil Republican vote between them, and hurt only each other.

What exactly does Huckabee owe the conservative establishment? Given how he was treated, exactly nothing -- and that's what he should give them at this point. There will be a time for Huckabee to figure out how to put a broader coalition together for his political future -- but now is not the time for that. There will also be a time to get behind the eventual nominee, whoever that is. But for right now, a vote for Huckabee is a vote for Huckabee -- not one for McCain.

Romney spent millions of dollars on negative ads in order to destroy Huckabee. And now Huckabee is supposed to drop out in order to help this guy defeat McCain, a candidate who has treated Huckabee with respect throughout the campaign?

The truest, bluest conservative in the race was Duncan Hunter. He is supporting Mike Huckabee, and not the conservative establishment's latest cause -- Mitt Romney. Maybe he knows something about just how conservative Huckabee really is, and how unconservative Romney really is?

One of the most disappointing things about this race has been the highly prejudicial way in which talk-radio and conservative columnists have worked to eliminate one Republican candidate after another.

The irony is that they are supporting Romney to the hilt, exaggerating his virtues and ignoring his faults. In another race where there was a real conservative, these same pundits would be savaging Romney, taking him down for the count. The only reason they are supporting Romney so strongly is that he is the only non-McCain candidate left standing after they had ignored, failed to ignite, or destroyed all of the other candidates. They ran out of ammunition after spending it all mowing down Huckabee's candidacy.

Frankly, it is hard not to be sick of this whole game of trying to pretend that the conservative movement has any ability to control the Republican party. It can only do it when it has a strong candidate of its own. And this year, they didn't have one.

And this conservative establishment doesn't deserve to pick the GOP's nominee. With their gross distortions of Huckabee and McCain -- and their exaggerations of Romney's virtues, they have shown a lack of intellectual honesty and respectability.

Interestingly, MH finds agreement with no less than Jonah Goldberg, one of our less favorite conservative writers (although much of our dislike of him is based on left-over memories of his earliest and mouthiest stage at National Review Online. He has developed a little more humility, maturity, and restraint since those days.)

Goldberg chides the National Review folks for the over-the-top way in which they have gone after John McCain. And Mr Goldberg is hardly alone -- quite the contrary.

Most importantly, Republican voters are disagreeing with the conservative establishment. With the exit of Giuliani, McCain has leaped to nearly 50% support -- in a 3 man race. This is nothing to sniff at.

But getting back to Huckabee, he should absolutely not drop out. And conservative pundits shouldn't care -- after all, they were the ones who determined that Huckabee was a liberal -- not a conservative. Instead of just saying that Huckabee was a particular variety of conservative within the coalition, they insisted on calling him "liberal" in order to sandbag him more effectively.

So why, exactly, would Huckabee be "splitting the conservative vote" -- when he isn't a conservative in the first place? By urging Huckabee to drop out and endorse Romney -- or at least leave the field to Romney -- all of Huckabee's critics are admitting that they were exaggerating just a wee bit when labelling Huckabee a liberal.

And with that in mind, why should we believe them now, when they claim that there is a world of difference between McCain and Romney? To see stark differences between these two requires an act of intellectual dishonesty that is breathtaking in its audacity. Romney is a Massachusetts liberal Republican. The fact that he is now wearing a new intellectual costume doesn't change that.

It requires giving McCain grief he doesn't deserve -- and it requires giving Romney credit he has never earned. Conservatives need to be honest enough with themselves to acknowledge that they didn't have a candidate this year. Are the earnest promises of a man who just reached political puberty at age 60 more to be relied on than McCain's unwaivering sense of honor and willingness to do the unpopular?

Give us the guy whose flaws we know intimately, if one must choose between Romney and McCain. Romney's record is that of a moderate to liberal Massachusetts governor. He has, at root, less to show that proves he is a conservative at heart than does Sen. McCain, and we can only hope that Montana caucus voters have the sense to see that before falling for the idea that Romney is a conservative Ninja warrior.

Choosing him as the lesser of two evils is a respectable reason to support Romney. But the idea that the Republican party will fall apart under McCain -- and that Romney is the guy to come riding to the rescue of the conservative movement? Not buying it.