In 2004, George W. Bush was challenged for the Republican nomination by Bill Wyatt, a t-shirt maker from California who ran on anti-Iraq War platform. Mr. Wyatt garnered 10% of the vote in Oklahoma, 4% in Louisiana, and 1% in Missouri, and 0.23% in New Hampshire. Bill Wyatt wasn’t a huge concern for Republicans or Republican unity. In fact, I only heard of him because of a news account mentioning his 10% showing in Oklahoma.

Mike Huckabee is not Bill Wyatt. Other than obvious policy differences, the difference between Mike Huckabee and Bill Wyatt is that many in the grassroots of the Republican Party support him. The problem is then not Governor Huckabee, but his supporters. The problem is more than 60% of voters who showed up to support Huckabee in Kansas, 44% of Louisiana Republican Primary voters, and 41% of Virginia Republican voters.

Let us hear no more pundits declaring that Governor Huckabee staying in the race hurts the party. It certainly does not. It’s all those people who choose to go out and vote for him that are the real problem.

Or perhaps it is the fact that establishment bosses are in the process of coronating a man who cannot rally the Republican Party together. A man whose best argument to the heart and mind of conservatives is not who he is, but who he is not.