Holding Pattern: Challenges for a Nominee-in-Waiting

The weekend's GOP caucauses and primaries did little to damage John McCain's ultimate nomination as the GOP standard-bearer, although Mike Huckabee's electoral support highlights the challenges to the nominee-in-waiting.

The New York Times has an analysis:

Just as Senator John McCain appeared poised to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he was reminded over the weekend that many Republican voters still have not climbed aboard his bandwagon.

Mr. McCain, who won enough delegates in the coast-to-coast nominating contests on Tuesday to place him mathematically beyond the reach of his Republican rivals, suffered embarrassing losses in the Louisiana primary and the Kansas caucuses on Saturday to former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.

Mr. Huckabee, who brags that in college “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles,” also wrestled Mr. McCain to a virtual draw on Saturday in the Washington State caucuses. Party officials declared Mr. McCain the winner by several hundred votes.

The Huckabee campaign announced Sunday on its Web site that it would challenge the results of the Washington caucuses. At issue are 1,500 votes that the Huckabee campaign says were not counted.

Results of the weekend contests do not affect Mr. McCain’s solid lead, or change the likelihood of his winning the nomination. But they underlined the thinness of support for him among religious and social conservatives, who make up the bulk of Mr. Huckabee’s voters, and the problem that has dogged Mr. McCain’s presidential aspirations since 2000: how to overcome the distrust he elicits from that core constituency in his party while maintaining credibility as the unorthodox Republican whom moderates, independents and many Democrats like so much.

Before the elections on Saturday, Mr. McCain seemed ready to begin casting the net wide for those independent voters.

“We have to energize our base and yet continue to reach out because we know that the formula for success in most campaigns, as you know, is your base, independents and Reagan Democrats,” he told reporters on a flight from Wichita, Kan., to Seattle.

I don't think Huckabee's lingering campaign fundamentally changes the McCain calculus on reaching out to conservatives.

The conservative split of '08 is the biggest political story of the season. Huckabee's continued campaign serves to highlight McCain's weaknesses with the base of the party, but the risks are on both sides. While the former Arkansas Governor has so far played nice in his battle with the Republican frontrunner, campaigns have way of getting nasty.

Huckabee's in his rights to challenge the election results in Washington, for example, but ratcheting up the competition too firmly may only alienate him from McCain. While the Arizona Senator's obviously reconciled with his maverick relationship to the base, he'll only tolerate an upstart for so long. If Huckabee truly has aspirations for a top position in a McCain administration - and in presidential politics beyond '08 - he needs to face the challenge of his mathematical reality as well.

It's time concede the nomination to McCain.