Huckabee drops out, McCain wins nomination

Both of these stories should not be surprising--they were eventually coming. The first MSNBC News story is Mike Huckabee dropping out of the race:

IRVING, Texas - Mike Huckabee bowed to reality Tuesday and out of the Republican presidential race.

"We kept the faith," he told his end-of-the-road rally Tuesday after John McCain clinched the nomination. "I'd rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place."

The genial conservative went out as he had campaigned all along, with a quip: "It's time for us to hit the reset button."

Huckabee won the leadoff Iowa caucuses, making him a sudden but short-lived sensation, and then seven other states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kansas. Meantime, McCain piled up big victories on his way to winning the prize on Tuesday night.

The writing was on the wall for weeks, but the former Arkansas governor hung on until McCain secured the necessary delegates.

"We started this effort with very little recognition and virtually no resources," Huckabee told supporters. "We ended with slightly more recognition and very few resources."

The crowd laughed. "But what a journey," he said. "What a journey. A journey of a lifetime."

In some ways, Huckabee was a side-show in the GOP race between Mitt Romney and John McCain. He was the candidate to the religious conservatives, who wanted to bring God into the Constitution. There was no way the Republican Party would ever nominate Huckabee, however he did provide an outlet for the evangelical conservatives to register this disapproval of the GOP's Mormon candidate of Romney, and the flat-out pandering candidate of McCain. If there was any electoral strength with Huckabee, it was with his wins in the Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. He was the evangelical candidate.

‘The contest begins tonight,’ McCain says: This is also another no-brainer MSNBC story of John McCain winning the GOP nomination:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona claimed the GOP nomination Tuesday after rolling up one-sided victories in primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

"I am very pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a sense of great responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States," the 71-year-old McCain told cheering supporters in Dallas.

"The contest begins tonight," the former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam said, looking ahead to a match-up with either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 4 General Election. Both the remaining Democratic candidates called McCain and offered their congratulations, their campaigns said.

[....]

According to projections by NBC News and the Associated Press, Tuesday’s victories gave McCain a total of 1,205 delegates, 14 more than the 1,191 required to secure the Republican nomination. The projection is based on both delegates pledged to the four-term senator from Arizona and those who have told the AP they will vote for him.

When Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, it was only a matter of time for McCain to seal the nomination. Mike Huckabee was never really a credible threat to McCain, but rather a distraction. The question here was how long will it take before McCain wins the required number of delegates needed to cinch the GOP nomination. Yesterday, he cinched it. Now McCain can shift his campaign from a primary to a general election campaign in attacking the Democratic candidates. And you can bet that the McCain campaign is already thinking up strategies to attack either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It is just a question of who is going to win the Democratic nomination.