Huckabee Seeks To Deadlock GOP Convention (With Magic Number 666)

During an interview on a Texas radio station, Mike Huckabee outlined his strategy for winning the Republican nomination:

“If we win Texas, I think it changes the dynamics of this race. It could well go all the way to the convention.If the convention delegates pick the president, chances are they would pick the most conservative. I would be the one they would end up picking, if that’s the criteria.”

There are a total of 898 remaining Republican delegates (523 pledged and 375 unpledged). In order for Huckabee’s strategy to work, he would need to win 74% (666) of these remaining delegates. Yes, that’s right, the magic number in Huckabee’s winning strategy is 666. Oh sweet irony.

Quite simply, Huckabee’s strategy simply is not plausible. And he recognizes it as such when he compared the continuation of his presidential race to the Battle of the Alamo, adding:

“You don’t engage in battles only because you anticipate you’re going to win them. You engage in your battles because you believe that they’re right.”

This isn’t exactly a fair analogy to the brave soldiers at the Alamo, nor does a presidential campaign want to analogize his campaign to a battle that resulted in the brutal slaying of the remaining soldiers. Huckabee might seem a lot more sincere about his incredibly unrealistic intentions, if he wasn’t performing paid speeches. He gave one last weekend in the Cayman Islands and gave another today in Colorado. The paid speech issue is a bit more complicated and I’ll post on it in the coming days, so stay tuned.

If you’re curious about the math, you can check it out after the jump.

[Note: In order to be mathematically generous to Gov. Huckabee, I pretended as though Mitt Romney's delegates do not support McCain or Huckabee, in other words, I pretended as though they simply don't exist.]

In order to win the GOP nomination a candidate needs 1,191 delegates. McCain currently has an estimated 958 delegates (876 pledged and 82 unpledged). This means that McCain needs to get at least 233 of the 898 remaining delegates.

Thus, in order to ensure that McCain doesn’t get 233 delegates, Huckabee would need to win 666 of the remaining 898 delegates.