Preacher Man

Picking up on a Michael Barone insight, Nate Silver looks at the question of whether Mike Huckabee is a legitimate GOP presidential prospect or "the new Jesse Jackson." As Silver points out, given the importance of evangelicals within the GOP, if Huckabee actually won a similar percentage of evangelical votes as Jackson won black votes, he could win the nomination - but he didn't do that in 2008. To win in 2012 or 2016, Huckabee would need to either substantially broaden his appeal to economic and national security conservatives, or to maneuver other Christian right candidates out of the race to monopolize the values vote.