What Huckabee hopes to win

And yet, rival Mike Huckabee thinks he's still in it.

"This is an election, not a coronation," a defiant Huckabee said Wednesday as he set out for Wisconsin, site of the next GOP primary.

Day by day, Huckabee has become a growing nuisance to McCain.

"Of course, I would like for him to withdraw today; it would be much easier," the senator from Arizona told reporters Wednesday at a social club on Capitol Hill. "But I respect his right to remain in this race for just as long as he wants to."

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, conceded over the weekend that it would take a miracle for him to get the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination. McCain is leading, 843 to 242, according to the Associated Press.

But as he battles onward, Huckabee, 52, is gaining something else: A chance to be seen as a national leader of conservative evangelicals -- a potent force in the Republican Party -- and perhaps as their standard-bearer in a future presidential race.

Fueled by support from evangelicals, he won two Republican contests Saturday -- in Louisiana and Kansas. He gave McCain another scare in Virginia on Tuesday, even though he lost.

Bob Wickers, a Huckabee strategist, said the former Arkansas governor still hoped to best McCain, but added that there were "bigger issues here about the next generation."

"It's about conservatives," Wickers said. "It's about the movement. It's about people under-represented in the party who need a voice, and him being that voice."

If Huckabee can pick up another 39 delegates -- his best shots will come next month in Texas and Mississippi -- he also would get the satisfaction of surpassing the total collected by Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the race.

The price, however, would be more discomfort for McCain.

"You never want to be losing primaries after you've kind of locked up the nomination," said Alan I. Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

In Wisconsin on Wednesday, Huckabee echoed Romney's argument that McCain -- whom he did not name -- was part of a Washington culture that has failed to address many of America's problems.