No one is ever happy to concede an election, but as political narratives go, Mike Huckabee has nothing to be ashamed of. After bobbing along for months in the basement of national polls with almost no national name recognition, this former Arkansas governor’s quixotic bid briefly launched him into the national spotlight, reorganizing the race for the Republican nomination overnight. Sure, he never really had a shot in a race that, unlike the Democratic side, is structured to weed out the competition early with winner-take-all primaries that starve people like Mike Huckabee of delegates. The fact that the odds were so stacked against him worked well for his public image; it made it much easier to ignore his wack-job approach to subjects like evolution in favor of his adorable jokes and extended metaphors. For that, we offer this eulogy:
Mike Huckabee, progenitor of quaint witticisms and mixed metaphors, bowed out of the campaign tonight with the aura of an aged prizefighter ceding to the reality of his waning strength. Appearing next to his wife, Janet, who stood by her husband with the statuesque dignity of a portrait, he spoke in the soft tones of a grade school principal bidding farewell to a graduating class. The country must be “the best nation we can be,” he said, but it was “time to hit the reset button.” Though he posted a promising batting average in the early days of this primary season, in the end Mike Huckabee simply couldn’t bring his runners home. His Boy Scout morals and Yogi Berra charm were insufficient to bring him home in the Pinewood Derby of American politics, but we will forever remember him, like we remember the famed Alamo upon which another great American battle was fought and lost, for making red and blue American seem ever so slightly more united in the color of his prose.
