Candidates Look Ahead to Potomac Primaries

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McCain, Huckabee Score Important Wins

Voters in 24 states and American Samoa headed to the polls on Feb. 5 for the largest-ever "Super Tuesday" election. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) racked up crucial early primary victories from New York to California, while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won a series of contests in the South.

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Making the rounds of the television news and talk shows this morning, Huckabee, buoyed by his showing yesterday, said he would compete in the upcoming contests, and chided talk-radio hosts and pundits who "had tried to write me off." He said Texas and Kansas are "in play" for him, and he ventured, "I think we can win in Virginia."

In any case, he vowed he would keep running until someone wins the 1,191 delegates needed to capture the GOP nomination.

Huckabee also criticized Romney for "whining" about events that gave Huckabee a victory at yesterday's West Virginia GOP convention. After none of the candidates won a majority in the first round of delegate voting there, McCain's backers threw their support to Huckabee to prevent Romney from winning the 18 delegates at stake.

"There's nothing dirty that happened in West Virginia," Huckabee told the Fox News Channel in response to a question. "The fact that they would rather have me than Mitt Romney, is that dirty? No, that's politics."

Huckabee said he "didn't cut a deal" with McCain, denying a charge from Romney. "Mitt Romney the day before had said, 'Let's quit whining,' " the former Arkansas governor said. "Yesterday, he's whining. So he can't even hold his same position on whether it's a good thing to whine or a bad thing to whine."

Huckabee, a socially conservative former Baptist minister, dismissed questions about whether he was staying in the race to position himself as McCain's running mate. He said on NBC's "Today" show, "Nobody ever wants the vice president's job. Nobody ever turns it down."

He said, "We're going to be opponents over the next several weeks, and we're not going to be talking about a marriage. We're going to be talking about both trying to go after the same bride."

"I'm not giving up," he said on CNN.

Huckabee said his victories yesterday -- he also took Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and his home state of Arkansas -- were significant because a Republican presidential candidate needs to win the South in order to capture the White House.

Asked about conservative commentators who have said they would vote for Clinton before they would back McCain, whom they consider an apostate on some issues, Huckabee told CNN, "Well, you know what? They're not a conservative. If they say that, then that just proves something: They're more about themselves than they are the cause. Because there's no way that a true conservative would vote for Hillary Clinton."

He said he respects McCain and "would certainly vote for him before I would vote for Hillary or Obama."

Huckabee added, "Some people need to switch to decaf and realize, folks, we may not get all of our battles just like we want, but there's a larger context in which this has to be fought."