Huckabee Sets Aside Ego, Marches to Texas
After suffering a big loss in Wisconsin Tuesday night, Mike Huckabee picked himself up, made a joke about not having to wear a cheesehead, and trekked down south to Texas the next day to continue a campaign that has been written off as done by nearly everyone except his supporters.
"One of the things that I get asked every day and I'm sure you're probably asking in the chorus, is why you keep going?" Huckabee told reporters, according to CNN. "Let me assure you that if it were ego, my ego doesn't enjoy getting these kind of evenings where we don't win the primary elections.
"So, it's got be something other than that, and it is. It's about convictions, it's about principles that I dearly, dearly believe in."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
As expected, Huckabee gave his usual explanation that he is staying in the race to give conservative voters an alternative candidate to frontrunner John McCain, whom some consider too moderate on key conservative issues such as life, marriage, and immigration.
But the badly trailing Republican contender admitted he was "disappointed" by the preliminary results out of Wisconsin, which showed him behind McCain by double-digits.
"What I have to remind individual voters is that their voice and their vote still count and that nobody can take that away from them unless they, just simply, give it away," Huckabee said, according to CBS News. "That's why we need to continue on and especially through Texas. Polls there show us very close and almost in a statistical dead heat."
"Texas is a state where independence matters a lot, people there don't like to be told what to do, how to think, how to vote," Huckabee said Wednesday while in Texas. "I think we'll find a very welcome atmosphere."
The former Arkansas governor will visit the Alamo Thursday, a historic place which he likens to his own against-the-odds situation.
"There's a lot of history there, a lot of history of courage, of valor and also of people who stood by their convictions no matter what," the southern governor said.
Republican Texans will head to the poll March 4.
