Messages posted by: Tozikio

"McCain and Giuliani?" The Giuliani that never won a single state? I call BS already.

McCain has enough of a challenge as it is, keeping the right flank in the GOP tent. Bringing Giuliani on board is unthinkable.

It's not inconceivable for Huckabee to capture a few late wins. In 1976, Ronald Reagan won North Carolina when his campaign was sputtering on fumes and it looked like Ford had the race sewn up. That last minute surge may have been what spooked Ford into dumping Rockefeller for Dole as VP... he needed the hard right backing him.

It could just be a simple calculation on Hucakbee's part. Get as many delegates as he can before the convention, to influence McCain as much as he can and claim a battlefield victory, if not an outright one.

For what it's worth, though - I suspect Huckabee will drop out after Texas and the back channel negotiating has already been taking place.

I don't think you're far off the mark, but I'd say the odds of Huck dropping out before Texas are around 30-35%, even assuming he loses Wisconsin.

He is not attacking McCain to the degree that Romney did. And I don't think the GOP leadership really cares all that much, since they assume Huckabee won't be gaining useful ground anyway.

If anything, they probably don't mind the Evangelicals getting some time to shout for attention. They would rather all the anti-McCain sentiment be advertised by the news as within Huckabee's camp, than in Ron Paul's. So, McCain will reach out to the Evangelicals in March, dignify their concerns, and make them feel important then.

When a big long URL is in a thread and you face the wide scrolling problem, one way around it is to use right-click and open a fresh window for the thread.

This is a mystery to a lot of people. And there are several posters on here with deep short positions... buyers just keep wading in.

Heck, I often leave a small 2 or 3 lot sell out there in the 13's and even they get filled once in a while.

Wendel Wilkie in 1940 came in 3rd on the first convention vote. But he kept peeling away delegates on each subsequent floor vote and won the nomination on the 6th try. It *can* happen. I'm not wagering on it this time around, though.

I'm not short Huck's VP contract, but it's tempting. Articles like this lead me to think, he's not that interested in being VP. He seems to be willing to forge ahead and irritate the McCain campaign. He may want something else. Maybe he wants to hang in there long enough, to displace Romney as the fallback heir for the GOP in another cycle.

http://www.komoradio.com/news/15491731.html

With McCain so close, he does only need some "leftover" delegates in several more states to clinch it. Yeah, he'll stumble along Mondale'84 style and eventually get there.

But Huckabee's presence and the willingness of voters to keep the campaign rolling shows the lack of interest in "uniting" right now. McCain's result in Washington doesn't look too hot either. 74% of the delegates there expressed a preference for someone else, even though he is the projected "winner".

Heh. Romney is *still* getting a lot of votes in Washington state. His supporters don't seem to be rolling McCain's way.

Hats off to you bold traders this morning, that were shorting the Huck dropout in the 70s!

Huckabee leading in Louisiana with 55% reporting on CNN ... I suspect the news tomorrow will be "What's happening to McCain?" if Huck gets 2 states.

It doesn't look good for a "front runner" to be still scrapping with another contender. McCain needs to free himself, to go after the Democrats.

And we have Virginia coming up. That will be an interesting one. Northern VA, is more like the northeastern states McCain does well in. Southern VA is the kind of small town territory where Huckabee gets votes.

Huckabee squashed McCain like a bug today in Kansas. This really shows what the right concoction of "Stop McCain" among the voters can do.

Washington state is much less evangelical than Kansas or Louisiana. If Huckabee wins that one, McCain has a big problem on his hands.

I lost a lot shorting Obama in Kansas and Missouri last week, but have to admit the Dem race is becoming very interesting. I think there is a growing sense "out there" that people don't really want 8 more years of the Clintons.

I know what you're saying. I remember seeing Romney claim on Tuesday night that he'd stay in it to the convention. I already suspected upon seeing this, that he was going to drop out anyway.

I am wondering if we'll see a Huckabee/Paul dynamic emerge to put a squeeze on McCain, like the Huckabee/McCain dynamic earlier in the campaign that squeezed Romney. Paul's delegates put Huckabee over the top in West Virginia, and we could see that happen again in another state.

The key question is how much does Huckabee care about staying on good terms with McCain. My gut says that Huckabee is a deal maker - there is a price at which he'll leave. Remember that McCain dropped out in 2000 to get his campaign finance reform accepted into Bush's platform. It's how these things work. Shorting Huckabee could be more profitable... but I would be more concerned about how the back channel negotiations are going, to sit on that one.

Paul issued a communique last night admitting that he won't win the nomination, but that he would continue to campaign in the remaining states in order to gather delegates and press his case at the convention.

Argue what you want about his positions - but Paul is definately someone that does not wince from saying what he really means. I just shorted some more at 28. I think his Feb dropout contract is one of the safest short term plays right now.

Shorting Huckabee's drop contract is a very wild gamble. It comes down to how serious the "Stop McCain" movement becomes.

Huckabee came within a whisker of beating McCain in Missouri with Romney still in the race. He may have more hidden strength in the midwest, than he's generally given credit for.

He may do well in Kentucky, Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio, Texas and North Carolina which have yet to vote... He's still a regional candidate overall, but strong enough to make McCain fight for the win. Plus we don't know how many Romney delegates will wander over to Huck.

Having said that, the logical thing for him to do is fold within a week or two "for the good of the party" style too. Otherwise he begins making foes in the McCain camp.