Cooking the Math
Fox News has a new pundit: Karl Rove.
After Super Tuesday, whipping out a white chalkboard, writing columns of numbers, he made his first prognostication on Hannity and Colmes, declaring Mike Huckabee is kaput. Rove said – according to the math – Huckabee must win 83% of remaining delegates – an impossibility. In his words “the contest is over.”
Rove’s math shot across the airwaves; last weekend, Huckabee won Kansas and Louisiana – and narrowly lost Washington state – but the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and Fox buying Rove’s logic said, That’s interesting. But it’s meaningless. The contest is over.
They should have taken a moment to do the math themselves. Because Mr. Rove – who, as Governor Huckabee’s campaign points out, supports Senator McCain – sold them a bill of goods. What he did was assume none, not one, of Mitt Romney’s (now he’s out of the race) or Ron Paul’s delegates will vote for Huckabee. Then he did his math. A fairer assessment would have been to count Romney’s and Paul’s delegates as up for grabs; in that case, while Huckabee still faces an uphill climb, he doesn’t need anywhere near Mr. Rove’s ‘impossible’ 83%.
Nothing wrong with Karl Rove being both a pundit for Fox News, and a McCain supporter. But next time he whips out his chalkboard, take it with a grain of salt. Poor Governor Huckabee is in enough hot water without cooking the math to make him look worse.
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Cooking the Math
Fox News has a new pundit: Karl Rove.
After Super Tuesday, whipping out a white chalkboard, writing columns of numbers, he made his first prognostication on Hannity and Colmes, declaring Mike Huckabee is kaput. Rove said – according to the math – Huckabee must win 83% of remaining delegates – an impossibility. In his words “the contest is over.”
Rove’s math shot across the airwaves; last weekend, Huckabee won Kansas and Louisiana – and narrowly lost Washington state – but the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and Fox buying Rove’s logic said, That’s interesting. But it’s meaningless. The contest is over.
They should have taken a moment to do the math themselves. Because Mr. Rove – who, as Governor Huckabee’s campaign points out, supports Senator McCain – sold them a bill of goods. What he did was assume none, not one, of Mitt Romney’s (now he’s out of the race) or Ron Paul’s delegates will vote for Huckabee. Then he did his math. A fairer assessment would have been to count Romney’s and Paul’s delegates as up for grabs; in that case, while Huckabee still faces an uphill climb, he doesn’t need anywhere near Mr. Rove’s ‘impossible’ 83%.
Nothing wrong with Karl Rove being both a pundit for Fox News, and a McCain supporter. But next time he whips out his chalkboard, take it with a grain of salt. Poor Governor Huckabee is in enough hot water without cooking the math to make him look worse.
Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.