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The politics of all this is absolutely fascinating. McCain probably has the nomination locked up but that does not mean that he did not make some political missteps, particularly in his dealing with Huckabee. Huckabee is a politician from another planet in the sense that he is so efficient. He can get votes and even win a primary as he did today with little money, organization, or handlers.

McCain was way too cute for his own good in how he handled that West Virginia votes. He thought he had killed two birds with one stone by giving his votes to Huckabee and denying Romney a victory. He felt that he was rewarding Huckabee with the West Virginia should satisfy Huckabee for staying in the race and taking out Romney in the South where in a two man race, McCain could not have caused Romney to drop out.

The problem was Huckabee was reading the press everyone else was and he saw the speculation that he was going to the Vice President for McCain as a reward for crippling Romney.

Well when Romney dropped out, it was made clear that Huckabee was no longer of any use to McCain and there was no way he was going to John McCain's vice-president when McCain could nominate someone like Lieberman and have the MSM slobber all over him for reaching across the aisle.

Unlike Romney, it is of no personal financial cost to Huckabee to stay in the race and he is having the time of his life with all the attention he is getting so there is no incentive for him to drop out, and Huckabee is an optimist who believes in miracles and he still thinks he might get lucky.

So Huck stays in with little to get him to drop save the offer of the vice-presidential nomination. Now there is the bind. Rick Perry calls Huckabee to drop out not because Perry is some kind of big shot Republican leader. But because Perry is governor of the state of Texas , a big state, and a state that Huckabee could win. That would be very very embarrassing for McCain and Perry as well because Perry just recently endorsed McCain probably thinking that it was a move which had way more upside than downside. The pressure is now on the leadership of the party and McCain to get Huckabee to drop out as quickly as possible because if Huckabee wins a state like Texas or even if McCain is forced burn a lot of money and time to win it, it ultimately hurts McCain and party leaders who endorsed him.

It sure looked like McCain got all that he could have asked for when Romney dropped out. But now he faced with candidate who has no reason to drop unless he gets the VP and a bunch of dissatisfied voters who see a vote for Huckabee as vote against McCain and all the poohbahs who endorsed him.

Al Gore spent lots of time and money reinventing himself as a candidate every couple of monthes. Shoot that ain't nothing for ol' Huck is being reinvented everyday and it ain't costing him a dime.