by Mike Huckabee’s spokesman has just told Fox News that he will be speaking within the hour and it is his intent to resign from the race for the Republican presidential nomination now that John McCain has all but won the nomination. More later.
Huckabee’s resignation speech:
"Ladies and gentlemen I called Senator McCain a few moments ago. It looks apparent tonight that he will in face achieved 1191 delegates to become the Republican nominee for the party.
I extended to him not only my congratulations but my commitment to him and to the party to do everything possible to unite our party but more importantly to unite our country so that we can be the best nation that we can be, not for ourselves but for the future generations to whom we owe everything, just as we owe previous generators for all that they have done for us.
Senator McCain ran an honorable campaign because he’s an honorable man. One of the things that I’m proudest of is that the 2 campaigns that have been run in the most civil manner are the two in the Republican party that have latest on their feet to the finals. And I’m grateful for the manner in which he has conducted his campaign and quite frankly with your great help I’m very proud of the way you have insisted that we conduct our campaign and it’s been one that we will always be able to say was done with honor.
It’s now important that we turn our attention not to what could have been or what we wanted to have been but what now must be and that is a united party, but a party indeed comes together on those principles that have brought many of us not just to this race but to politics in general."
…
"The apostle Paul wrote that I fought the good fight, I’ve finished the race, and I’ve kept the faith. I believe tonight that one of the things that we will be able to say is that not only have we fought the good fight and finished the race – we would have liked to have finished it first – but we stayed in it until the race was over.
But I think more importantly we’ve kept that faith and that for me has been the most important goal of all. I would rather lose an election than to lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place."
