If there's a single over-arching message John McCain learned from his 2000 campaign, it is that in a two man race, no Republican can win the nomination as well as the general election without the support of the Christian Conservatives. McCain is no fool, and being an old Washington hand, he doesn't miss a trick. The only way for McCain to win the Republican nomination in light of his 2000 debacle with respect to Christians is to neutralize them, to divide them and conquer them. To do this, McCain needed a shill. Enter Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, who governed as a liberal, is in favor of open borders, and like McCain(and Perry and Scwarzeneggar and Crist and Guliani) is an advocate for the former Mexican president, Vincente Fox. Huckabee has been talking in code throughout this campaign, frequently quoting the Bible, even in contexts where the quote didn't fit, and speaking of his belief that the earth is 6,000 years old. His intended audience has been the Christian conservatives, with the sole purpose of stealing their votes from Romney.

Interestingly, polling data strongly suggests that if Huckabee gets out of the race, even as late as Monday the 4th, before "Super Tuesday," most of Huckabee's supporters would swing with rapid near-certainty to Mitt Romney. Christians may have a problem with Romney's mormonism, but they have an even more thorough problem with John McCain. In any case, they would tend to favor Romney, because while not an evangelical Christian, he is at the very least a man committed, by all appearances, to his faith. That garners grudging respect from Christian conservatives. McCain, by contrast, has so damaged Christian conservatives that they would only support him in a worst case scenario.

So you see, it is critical to McCain, in order to win the nomination, to marginalize and divide the Christian wing of the Republican party. As I said, her comes Mike Huckabee, a man who has many sympathies with John McCain, a man who has governed from a point of view much more like McCain's policy positions than the Christian conservative into which Huckabee has morphed. Why then, would Huckabee set out to be a spoiler for McCain? What could be his motive?

The answer is simple, and it comes down to that oldest of political phenomena, the quid pro quo. Huckabee may be trying to secure for himself the Vice Presidential nod in a McCain campaign. More, the roster of Republican governors, those listed above, rushing to the microphone to endorse McCain, are after the same thing. They want something, and you can bet they've secured it before they speak. In the case of Huckabee, his treason to Christian conservatives may be the greatest political sell-out of all times, all in the name of his patron John McCain.

Markamerica

Next time: McCain's Mexican sell-out