HOW ABOUT A MCCAIN-HUCKABEE TICKET?

SUPER TUESDAY RESULTS

I just got home from the Stephens County election board where I viewed the results in our county. Stephens County turnout was 37%- excellent for a primary. Only 19 votes seperated former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee(1172) and Senator John McCain (1191) in county voting. Mitt Romney finished a distance third. On the Democrat side, Senator Clinton (3671) beat Senator Obama (1351).

In local races, Councilman Carl Bowers easily won reelection over two challengers winning 56.5% of the vote. Angela Wolfe beat incumbent Wayne Fish in the Empire Office #3 School Board race by 26 votes. Congratulations to both of those individuals.

Statewide Senator McCain beat Governor Huckabee by a mere four percentage points- 37% to 33%. Senator Tom Coburn's surprise endorsement of McCain was the difference in the race in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma GOP allocates 15 of their national delegates by Congressional District, so it will be tomorrow before it's clear who those delegates will be pledged to. The 26 At-Large delegates will go to McCain.

Super Tuesday 2008 is the closest our country has ever had to a national primary. It takes 1191 delegates to win the Republican nomination. Most so called experts are projecting that McCain will emerge from tonight with around 525 delegates(almost half of what he needs to be nominated), with Huckabee and Romney having 150 each. Romney spent the week urging Huckabee to get out of the race because Huckabee was taking "his" voters and Huckabee didn't have a chance to win. Ironically Huckabee did much better tonight than Romney nationally. A case could be made by the Huckabee camp that Romney should have been the one who got out of the race because he was hurting Huckabee's candidacy.

Nationally- Fox News has projected the following:

DEMOCRATS
CLINTON: Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Arizona, Calfornia
OBAMA: Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Connecticut,Utah, Colorado, Delaware, Alabama, Alaska, Missouri

REPUBLICANS
MCCAIN: Oklahoma, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, Calfornia
ROMNEY: Utah, Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado
HUCKABEE West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee

QUOTES WORTH REQUOTING FROM TONIGHT

"We got a little closer tonight to being able to have mothers tell their children in Arizona that someday you can grow up to be President of the United States." ~Senator John McCain

"Our time has come." "We are not a collection of just red states and blue states- we are the United States." "This race is different because of you." "We are the hope of the future."
~Senator Barrack Obama

One year ago, the front runners for their party nominations were Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton. After a rough start, it now appears the two are now the front runners for their parties nomination. McCain won ALL the WINNER TAKE ALL STATES! While Senator Clinton did not win as many states as Obama, she won the BIG STATES and more delegates overall.

Turnout was very lopsided nationally- Democrats turned out almost two to one vs. Republicans. In only two states was the Republican turnout higher than the Democrat turnout- Utah and Georgia. Karl Rove says that, "The war is a unifying factor for Republicans." "Americans don't like losing wars." "The Republican nominee must energize the base and there are volunteers that worked in 2000 and 2004 that is waiting to be tapped."

Twenty one percent of the people who voted for McCain tonight were influenced by Rudy's endorsement of McCain. McCain also won the last minute decision maker- 25% of McCain voters made their mind up in the last week.