With his second place finish in South Carolina, I'm ready to declare Mike Huckabee's presidential hopes essentially dead. Rest assured, Republican beltway insiders: only divine intervention could save his campaign now.
The Palmetto state's religious conservatives were Huckabee's natural constituency, but he didn't do as well as predicted among them - winning less than half the support of born-again or evangelical Christians when he was expected to triumph decisively among these voters. Guess racial pandering and homophobia only gets you so far.
Huckabee's campaign is turning out to resemble the pattern of Pat Robertson's similarly theological run for the Republican nomination in 1988. Like Huckabee, Robertson surprised everybody by placing second in Iowa - and then he faded fast. Huckabee one-upped that result, but he appears to be just as unsuccessful in transferring his appeal (even to evangelicals) outside that state.
