Huckabee to prove how bin Laden raid has changed 2012

By Paul Goldman

If my sources are right, then Mike Huckabee had definitely decided to run for President prior to the Navy Seals take down of Osama Bin Laden. That’s right: the former Arkansas Governor had decided to run and intended to announce it tonight. So if he says the opposite tonight, it is fair to ask: What changed in the last days?  

Naturally, the defeated 2008 hopeful isn’t going to say the President’s success in finding bin Laden convinced him to change his mind and not run. But  according to Newton’s First Law of Motion, an object keeps going in the same vector: in this case, Huckabee running for President seemed certain until he was hit upside the head by political reality.

Enter: The takedown of Osama.

Let’s play Sir Isaac Newton. Mike Huckabee is cruising along in his 2012 campaign for President. Everything is rolling along fine: he is talking to his political folks, the fund-raisers, the endorsers, it’s all going according to plan. He’s a top tier candidate, best polling internals, a leg up in the first contest out in Iowa, he is going up as Romney is going down.

Then…WHACK! — the 2012 bus runs smack into the Osama Take Down story. Before that, the former Governor of Arkansas didn’t have to worry about his foreign policy/national security credentials because that area, politically, didn’t seem to be at play in 2012. Instead, it was all domestic, all the time. But now?

NOT! According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, the 2012 Campaign Bus would have come to a relative stop [everything stays in motion although in this case as part of the splat against the bin Laden campaign wall], but Huckabee would have been launched through the window, over the engine block, still flying forward as I type these words. It would have taken a bit of time before he fell back to Earth and his political senses.

And tonight? The Huckabee proves Aristotle to be right, that the natural state of anyone with presidential ambition in the GOP is to take a rest until 2016.

Now according to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, the Huckabee crashing to Earth will have an equal and opposite reaction on the 2012 GOP campaign field. First, it is another whack to Mitt Romney, who has little chance to get the Huckabee vote. Now, this chunk is up for grabs in key states like South Carolina. True, you could say that with Huckabee out, this eliminates a big Romney opponent, but…no.

Sorry Mitt: Why you think the pro-government Governor of the Bay State, the one who signed a government-imposed health care system, believes he can be the 2012 nominee of the anti-government Tea/GOP Party is a mystery to me. I guess Mitt Romney thinks he is smarter than Sir Isaac Newton. Even Albert Einstein admitted it wasn’t possible to be smarter than Newton. But then again, Romney does have a sizeable ego.

Then there’s Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, seemingly the Bill Scranton of the 2012 field [in 1964, then Governor Scranton of the Keystone State became the “save-us guy” against Goldwater for the GOP establishment], who gets a boost here. But how much of a boost? That’s Newton’s Second Law of Motion, mass times acceleration. But that requires knowing both Daniels’ gravitas and the power of the Huckabee.  I am not quite sure Daniels has a lot of mass or that the Huckabee really had a lot of strength.

But Daniels does gain, as does the Congressman for the Bachmann Turner Overdrive, who is taking care of business (or, as Billy Joel sang, “you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for”).

Is that not the 2012 GOP presidential theme song? Okay, I concede the use of the words “might” and “may” should be replaced with something more declarative.

As for Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker believes Newton stole his laws of motion, which is why he is called Newt Gingrich and not, say, Nelson Gingrich. I think that’s on his birth certificate if they can ever find it.

Bottom line: What does Newton conclude about Huckabee dropping out? According to Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, the gravitas of the whole GOP field is double their mass divided by double the distance between them and reality.

That is to say: An apple couldn’t fall from a tree in the GOP presidential field, because there isn’t a sufficient pull to attract it.