A defiant Mike Huckabee said Thursday that there is “no way” he would drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and he blasted the media for characterizing the race as a contest between Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
{mosads}“If people think that I’m quitting, they need to get the message loud and clear. Somebody’s going to have to beat me,” said the former Arkansas governor. “There’s no way I’ll walk away.”
Huckabee, who was interviewed on MSNBC, criticized the media for trying to make the GOP contest a two-man race.
“It’s almost as if there’s this concerted effort to create a race between two people, and I just think the American people are the ones being cheated, as well as the people who’ve worked real hard to support me,” Huckabee said.
In a dig at Romney, Huckabee characterized himself as someone whose “conservatism is not a recent conversion.”
Huckabee pointed to several Southern states that will vote on Super Tuesday and noted that more GOP delegates will be awarded in Georgia than there were in Florida.
“So I think people just need to start understanding that there’s a real race going on. It’s not over yet — it’s certainly not for me,” Huckabee said, adding, “I’ve outlasted the people that were supposedly going to crush me. I’m still here, and I’m not going away.”