Even with many of the pundits auditioning for the role of the “Fat Lady” and Hillary Clinton riling up her supporters by promising to continue the fight after her crushing defeat in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana, the loudest clangor in John McCain’s ears is probably the echo reverberating from Pennsylvania throughout Indiana and North Carolina.
Despite being the presumptive nominee for over two months now, the Arizona Senator failed to rack up even three quarters of the vote in North Carolina after having experienced the same letdown in Pennsylvania on April 22. McCain barely scraped up three quarters of the vote in Indiana.
In Indiana, John McCain collected 77% of the vote in form of over 319,000 votes tallied. Mike Huckabee, who suspended his bid for the nomination on March 4, came in second with over 41,000 (10%), while Ron Paul garnered upwards of 31,000 (8%) and Mitt Romney, who’s been out of the race for a month longer than Huckabee, managed 19,000 plus (5%).
In North Carolina, 381,000 and a handful more (74%) pulled the lever for McCain, while over 62,000 (12%) did so for Huckabee and another some 37,000 (7%) for Paul. More than 20,000 (4%) recorded that they had no preference. Romney wasn’t on the ballot, so many of those “no preference” votes are probably his, like those on the Democratic side were for Barack Obama and John Edwards in Michigan, where Hillary Clinton and the ever-competitive Dennis Kucinich were the only names on the ballot.
The point here is this: McCain has spent two months with almost no competition on the Republican side. He’s got less than six months left before the general election, and there are hundreds of thousands of voters who, for one reason or the other, consider it appropriate and necessary to cast their vote for a Republican not named McCain.
Of course, this doesn’t even account for those voters who may be “biting the bullet” and voting for McCain in the primaries for the sake of party unity, yet aren’t too excited about it and don’t plan to fight for him.
McCain has a little time and one monumental decision which will determine whether he can bring all these wandering sheep back into the fold. That momentous choice, of course, is that of his running mate. The question is this: Will any conservative do? Or does it need to be Mike Huckabee? Or does it need to be anyone but the former presidential candidates?
I don’t have the answer to those questions. But it should be noted that few politicians have as strong and as well-known of reputations on issues such as life, marriage, the Second Amendment, and the Fair Tax as Huckabee has, not to mention his appeal to middle-class voters and Christian conservatives.
Tell me what you think.
EDIT/UPDATE: The numbers have been slightly updated. My source has been CNN.
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