LA CROSSE, WIS. — People musing about what keeps Mike Huckabee in the race for the presidency have wondered if he's sowing the ground for future television deals, angling for a vice presidential nod or getting ready to run for the White House again in 2012.
If those are his goals, the former Arkansas governor isn't admitting it. He told half a dozen audiences over the last three days in Wisconsin that he can still win or, at the very least, give voice to conservative voters not yet sold on the presumptive Republican Party nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
And Huckabee, 53, spoke in an interview about another motivation -- keeping faith with his can-do life story, one that has included a fair number of battles with doubters and naysayers.
So the Huckabee who campaigned energetically across this snowbound state through Friday morning, in advance of Tuesday's primary, was at once the former broadcaster and Southern Baptist preacher, quoting Isaiah and dropping one-liners. (On hunting armadillos: "We call those, in Arkansas, possum on the half-shell.")
He was also the teenager who was told he couldn't be elected a class officer, the overweight young man who struggled to complete a marathon walk, and the unlikely scholar who worked his way through college in just 2 1/2 years.
"As a kid growing up, I always lived with the idea of what I couldn't do. And it only motivated me," Huckabee said in an interview. "And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand about me. When people . . . try to push me out and discourage me, it just creates in me a steely resolve to say, 'Nope, not gonna do it.' "
Huckabee said he was determined to continue on, regardless of the results of the Wisconsin primary. His staff is already laying plans for appearances this week in Texas, which holds its primary March 4. And Huckabee pledged to continue hopping from state to state "and fighting hard until someone gets to 1,191" -- the number of delegates needed to win the Republican nomination.
In every election season, candidates promise to continue their campaigns, only to concede in the face of onrushing defeat. But Huckabee has from the start been accustomed to long odds and a campaign run on a relative shoestring.
