Time Magazine

Pundits may well marvel that, for once, participants in Tuesday's D.C., Maryland and Virginia Democratic Potomac Primaries will be casting votes that "actually matter," but yesterday's results among Republicans show that even if a party's nomination is all sewn up, votes can still matter quite a lot. John McCain's losses in Kansas and Louisiana — and his narrow win in Washington state — suggest that, at the very least, the Republican party will not be able to begin preparing for the general election as soon as leaders would like. At worst, Mike Huckabee's insistence on staying in the race undermines McCain's precarious status as a consensus conservative candidate. The longer that anyone-but-McCain voters have an option in the primary voting booth, the less likely they will be to turn out to vote in the general at all.

Huckabee has little chance of actually winning the nomination. He would have to win each one of the next primary contests with better than 50% of the vote just to keep McCain short of the 1,191 delegates needed to nab the GOP nod. And even then, it is unlikely that a brokered convention would work out in his favor. Remember, the only Republican whom traditional conservative leaders distrust more than McCain is Mike Huckabee. (This distrust might stem from Huckabee's independence from traditional conservative organizations; the Club for Growth's opprobrium means little to his loose coalition of homeschoolers, economic populists, evangelicals and socially moderate, young Christians.) Huckabee's best hope — as he admitted in a speech on Saturday — is for divine intervention: "I know the pundits, and I know what they say: The math doesn't work out...Well, I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles. And I still believe in those, too." Unfortunately, miracles are not yet an approved nomination vehicle. (This might change should, for instance, Huckabee accept the consolation prize of party chair.)