In more polls, in more states, by more national pollsters and consistently in polls pitted against President Obama head-to-head, no candidate had experienced greater “virtual” success dating back to February of 2010 than Gov. Mike Huckabee. For more than one full year, President Obama had lost poll after poll to Huckabee, while soundly defeating potential candidates Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and a litany of others.

Questions had been raised about Huckabee’s ability to raise money, but in recent days, specific, targeted meetings with some of the largest money-persons and bundlers available had made it clear a Huckabee candidacy would be well endowed.

Questions were raised about his policy positions in 2008, but ever since – on a daily basis – Gov. Huckabee had made his case clear to an audience that used to gain similar insights from Paul Harvey on more than 600 radio stations. Then, of course, his ratings bonanza on Fox News was added like ice cream on apple pie. Consistently, he didn’t just win his timeslot on Saturday evenings, but would beat all other weekend news programming on Saturday nights. Frequently the Sunday night replays of his show would garner second place in all of weekend cable news.

Questions had been raised about his family’s concerns and the emotional and physical toll a campaign cycle has on relationships. But Huckabee made it clear Saturday evening at roughly 9:56 p.m. EST, his decision was not based on money, platform/name recognition or family concerns.

All of the outstanding questions being answered, he explained that it all came down to a decision within – and that he was at peace with what he had decided. He was out. Period.

His absence in the 2012 contest leaves an enormous hole for the most reliable block of GOP voters in the country: evangelicals. His absence in the debates leaves the spotlight for someone else – given that he was largely considered the winner of all the GOP debate contests in the 2008 race. His absence removes the only candidate the GOP had, that was consistently polling ahead of Obama, every week, in nearly every poll and across a broad coalition of voting groups – including blacks, Hispanics and other nontraditionally GOP-leaning categories.

Huckabee made it clear that he intends to stay involved in the process, assisting candidates, keeping his political-action group active and weighing in on races from Congress to president. It just won’t be assisting him.

I’ve written at length in my new book about the biggest deficit we face as a nation, and it is not one that is measured in dollars, commerce or trade – it is one of character and having someone who clearly delineates right and wrong, common sense from stupidity, and speaking directly and plainly to the hearts of the voters is something we desperately lack.

With such a person, Huckabee, stepping aside, a wide open field becomes even more important. Honest answers to genuine questions become more crucial. Most importantly, tremendous insight and solutions to the biggest challenges of our national identity must be found.

The GOP is now at a distinct disadvantage with Huckabee out. The field now includes no one who consistently matches up well against the president, and in some ways you know the Obama camp must be thrilled at the prospect of not having to send the incumbent into a general-election debate against the much smarter wit of the governor.

But all is not lost, not even close. Ideas matter. Words mean things. Policies impact lives. And decisions have consequences.

President Obama even this week made a series of tremendously dishonest faux pas, on one hand claiming our domestic-drilling levels were at historic highs – only to be shown that they are roughly half what they were in 1970. He can and must be held accountable.

In some ways the race is perfectly aligned for a political outsider to come in and do well. Herman Cain, by most accounts, won the first debate held in South Carolina, and perhaps Huckabee’s exit is his gain.

Once the announcement was made, my producer came to my studio and queried, “What do you think?”

My answer was simple: “I think we all need to do our homework, know the issues, know the positions of the candidates and become advocates for the ideas we believe will solve our biggest problems.”

In short, absolutely nothing has changed, and it’s time to get to work.

And he couldn’t have done any of it without changing his views on important positions that he campaigned against, stood in opposition to and publicly opposed – policies of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

Without “enhanced interrogation techniques and the fight against terror in Iraq” President Obama would not have been able to execute the kill command against Osama bin Laden.

Here’s how it all tracks down: Sheikh Abu Ahmed turned out to be the single most important name to secure in the attempt to track and kill Osama bin Laden. Sheikh Abu Ahmed had been previously known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. (Abu Ahmed is actually of Kuwaiti descent.) Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti became known to U.S. officials through enhanced interrogations, CIA secret prisons – as well as Gitmo – and detainees captured in that “illegitimate” war in Iraq.

Beginning in early 2002 (under President Bush) multiple detainees in the secret prisons told interrogators of Abu Ahmed. None other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (al-Qaida No. 3 and “architect” of the 9/11 attack) also confirmed knowing Abu Ahmed.

Then in 2004, Hassan Ghul was captured battling anti-terror forces in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that Abu Ahmed was crucial to al-Qaida. Ghul implicated Abu Ahmed as close to Faraj al-Libi (who had replaced Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as al-Qaida’s active No. 3). Ghul was referred to by an Obama administration official as the “linchpin” in connecting the dots to identify Osama’s courier, Abu Ahmed.

In 2005, al-Libi was promoted to replace Mohammed, and he received word through the courier named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti – but when al-Libi was captured and interrogated through enhanced techniques, he revealed to authorities all they needed to know: that the courier for bin Ladin was the man that would lead them to him.

Connecting the dots was crucial and painstakingly took years. Doing so was also made difficult because then-Sen. Barack Obama opposed and worked publicly against phone taps of terrorists and eventually helped blow the story of our phone taps onto the pages of the New York Times. Oddly enough, Osama bin Laden suddenly stopped using phones. His almost exclusive use of very old-school couriers became the only way bin Laden communicated with his lieutenants.

President Obama campaigned against the use of phone taps of terrorists; he campaigned for the shutdown of the very secret prisons that coughed up the name of the courier; and he went so far after being elected to imply that his attorney general, Eric Holder, was ready to go arrest the CIA operatives and military special forces personnel that had conducted enhanced interrogations.

Yet this single most important piece of information that led to the capture and execution of our worst enemy was obtained exclusively through those very mechanisms and means President Obama demeaned, mocked and ordered shut down.

There is no doubt Obama made the right call to send in the Navy SEALs to extricate the corpse of Osama bin Laden. His decision to do so with a surgically precise strike showed special wisdom in that members of his own national security team opposed him in meetings running up to making the decision. He was right in calling on the SEALs because they are unlike any other special forces in all of military history. And he was right in reducing the collateral damage or the risk of any by not using predator drones and bombs.

History will reward him with the label of the one who captured and killed the worst terrorist of the past 20 years.

But he did so standing on the shoulders of a president who took political backlash, foul media coverage and a toxically poisoned electorate (poisoned largely by the efforts of Obama directly) to do what was right, to press forward in obtaining the critical pieces of data to set up the eventual capture and killing of Bin Laden.

President Obama owes his rightful success to a man he directly undermined nearly the entire time he was setting the pieces in place for Obama’s biggest national-security achievement.

President Obama owes an apology to President Bush.

He also owes a huge debt of thanks to the men and women of the CIA and special forces who interrogated with enhanced techniques, and to the men and women who fought and died in Iraq to bring him the information needed.

And how ’bout you?

Have you hugged a waterboarder today?

Having won the CPAC straw poll and beginning to pass long-time front-runner John McCain in national polls, Mitt Romney’s profile is beginning to be raised. Thus I felt the need when I had a few minutes with the candidate last week to ask him some very direct questions about his position on issues. I acknowledge, as does he, that he has not always believed as he does today. I for one am satisfied in talking with him, however, that these are his genuinely held positions.

His answers, in his own words:

KMC: Governor, I speak to a large audience of “values voters” on-air live from New York every day. Where would you place yourself today in the debate over abortion, unedited?

Gov. Romney: Well, I’m pro-life. This is an issue I’ve looked at, and I recognize a great struggle in the American psyche as we look at the needs of the unborn child, which I feel very deeply. And at the same time we are concerned about women and the choices that they would like to make with their own bodies and their own lives. And I’ve come down squarely on the side of life. I feel it is important for us to protect human life if we are going to be a civilized society. For that reason, some two years ago I authored a piece in the Boston Globe that explained why I am pro-life, and I am proud of that position.

KMC: Governor, as you are aware there is a fundamental battle on the issue of marriage in our society today. Where do you stand on that fundamental issue of marriage?

Gov. Romney: I believe it is critical that we have marriage before we have babies. And the reason for that is I want our kids to grow up with a mom and a dad – if at all possible. That’s the ideal setting for raising a child. If there can be a dad involved in their life as well as a great mom, that child has a much better chance of getting a great education. When there is a single mom, the chance that the child is going to be raised in poverty is 51 percent. Where the mom is married, that is only 7 percent. So let’s have, if we can, more marriage before we have more babies.

KMC: Governor, as you know, churchgoers are very concerned about a secular progressive attempt to redefine marriage to make it become anything other than what it has traditionally been understood. What does Mitt Romney say about that?

Gov. Romney: Marriage must be a relationship between a man and a woman. And this shouldn’t be based on concerns about supposed “adult rights.” This is instead focused on what I think is critical for a child. The ideal setting to raise a child is where there is a mom and a dad involved in their life.

KMC: What is your view to the classic struggle we fight today in the global war against terror, and particularly in Iraq? Especially in what we are seeing today?

Gov. Romney: With regards to Iraq, we have not managed the conflict following the collapse of Saddam Hussein terribly well. But that being said, we shouldn’t turn and run out. Doing that would result in a regional conflict that would draw us back in – in a more harmful and frightful way. And so the president is right to add additional troops to secure Baghdad. We’re going to see if that’s working in the next several months, and if it is we’ll keep at it, and if its not we move to plan “B.”

The governor’s time was so extremely limited. I was not able to probe as to what plan “B” was. What I did perceive is that Romney’s team is truly focused and that a plan “B” does in fact mean all-out victory, not collapse to the enemy.

There will be more opportunity to dig deeper on the issues that we all care about. Had I more time I would have asked about his position on tax reductions, the Second Amendment, educational reform and, yes, tort reforms. But these are the three non-negotiables for me. No candidate will be able to secure my vote without these three issues being properly addressed.

Giuliani has addressed them and fallen short on two of the three. McCain has failed marriage miserably. McCain also recently stated that he just didn’t get “juiced” talking about the life issue.

It was nice to see Romney not hesitate, try to duck or shade language to make it mean something other than it does. Pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-USA in the conflict against terrorists – that’s a positive and powerful combination.

Despite the fact that some in both parties strongly disagree, I believe the 21-month campaign cycle needs to become the norm, not the exception, and that in doing so we might actually get to shape elections that truly matter.

Not everyone agrees.

When Karl Rove utters an opinion regarding political cycles, the room usually goes all E.F. Hutton. But when he offered his opinion on 2008 recently, it seemed like nobody was listening.

“I think it is going to mean that people develop a persona earlier and wear out their welcome earlier than they would,” he told The Politico in an interview. “I think there’s going to come some point this year where people are going to basically be saying: ‘I’m largely disinterested in the contest.’ “

I’m not sure about the last part of his theory. It seems to me that the closer we get to the actual voting the natural ramp-up will be what it needs to be – fever pitch. But to the matter of candidates “wearing out their welcome,” let me be the first to say, “I’m all for it.”

In my estimation, for far too many election cycles the primary elections and the voters’ lack of involvement in them have given us some less than stellar choices for the general election. Every grass-roots group in America should be out in the marketplace – TODAY – pushing, hounding and stalking candidates on where they stand on every issue we can think of.

I’m personally tired of lending my permission to be led (my vote) to people that have only allowed us to see what they wanted us to see. It seems to me that if I am going to hire someone for a job as important as president – especially given the magnitude of the crises facing us today – I want to kick the tires a little bit to see how she holds together.

We should be asking, even expecting, to see these candidate be run through the ringer. Not because we’re masochists and want to see them self-destruct, but because we have the right to know how they will handle stress, how they respond when they make mistakes, and what the tenor of their true operational value system is like (not just the platitudes they give us with carefully styled hair at staged events.)

The longer the courtship, the better chance we have to know that the person we elect will be more like the person that begged us for our vote.

After all, it’s not like they’re applying for a job at McDonalds.

They are asking our permission to run the biggest economy, strongest defense and best-trained military in the world. They are telling us – or they should be – how they are going to seal up the borders, fight terrorists and jihadists aggressively, and not waste the money I send them out of what I’m earning to care for my family.

We have the right to see if the consistency of what they say over a long period of time stays parallel with the thinking of the framers of our Constitution – not to mention our Creator.

We have the right to know if they view some humans as less than humans. We need to be shown, when they promise compassion and care for the hurting, if they mean to help those who are hurting toward complete recovery, or if they intend to make them dependent upon their handouts as a way to increase their power base.

If character is the true measure of a person’s leadership ability, then the candidates need to have a longer incubation so that under the heat lamps we can take confidence that they make righteous decisions – not expedient ones.

In the election cycle of 2008 we’ve already seen cracks in the veneer.

When John Edwards hired two bloggers – whose idea of humor was to attempt to describe upstanding Bible-believing Christians as some sort of sexually repressed, deeply disturbed group of fornicators longing for incestuous relations – we learned that the candidate is not at all worried about associating with people who should not even be allowed to be around most people.

When Hillary Clinton screeches and squawks at Barack Obama for not jumping into the middle of an argument with David Geffen over her ability to tell the truth, we see that Hillary prefers to play the victim rather than lead through proactive confidence in her convictions.

And when John McCain declares it open warfare on men in the administration who had the courage to look 9-11 in the eye – and never blink – only to follow it up with a serenade about how Bush is ignoring “global warming,” we see how anger and maverick insanity have all but cost him the nomination.

For the American voter, the individual who says to the government “you have my permission to run the nation for now,” it will never be about finding a candidate who is without flaws. Rather for “We the People,” it is about the gritty, not-so-glamorous way candidates handle those flaws – and, more importantly, how they respond to them. And we need to see more of them – not less.

If we did, we might just see higher turnout in our state primary elections. As a result, we might get more competitive races, more sharply refined debates and a contest of ideas that truly deserves the attention of a great nation.

So keep these extended election cycles in place. Those who enter the waters will know what they face, and “We the People” will have a better chance to make the best decision possible.

And that just may mean less buyer’s remorse!

Hillary Clinton seems to view black voters the same way plantation owners viewed slaves – they are her property, they will do what she says, and she will make their lives hell-on-earth if she doesn’t get her way.

She also knows how to keep the field hands in line: Make the house slaves do all the dirty work.

Spread out before her is the entirety of the 2008 campaign for president. Hillary understands all too well that in recent political cycles liberals must have the vote of the poorly informed but overly hyped African-American voting majority if they are to stand a chance. If the Democrats lose more than roughly 9 percent of their vote, they are toast.

The problem in this election cycle is that there is a certifiably articulate poster boy for the Democratic Party, and he also happens to be black. His name is Barack Obama and he’s running against her in the primary. The problem this presents Hillary as a candidate is far greater than she has let on publicly, though off the record Washington insiders are confessing Hillary’s supporters are worried.

Since Hillary is known for her white-knuckle, “I’ll pull the switch myself if I have to,” maniacal, cut-throat style, she already verges on appearing to the general public as overly dominant; but by having a genuine contender in the race, who happens to also be African-American, her patience is really being stretched thin.

So, if the Democratic Party, which ironically enough founded the Ku Klux Klan* as tool by which to intimidate blacks into voting Democrat, has in fact become the modern-day plantation to black voters, Hillary is without question the plantation madam. On her plantation are the house slaves – Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, and most recently South Carolina state Sens. Robert Ford and Darrell Jackson.

Every one of these men cheered on Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Jesse Jackson worked tirelessly to help get Obama elected in his home state of Illinois. And as anyone with a functioning brain stem can figure out, of all the recent candidates the Democrats have put forward for president who happen to be black, Obama leaves them all in the dust by way of credentials and speaking and writing ability – not to mention the fact that he has actually served in elected office. As best we can tell he has also never had a love child with someone other than his wife.

The job of these four modern house slaves (and others for all we know) is to “be black” and to publicly cast doubt on Obama’s ability to win, his “true blackness,” experience in public office, and, once and for all, “why he’s just not black enough.”

I believe that this was suddenly why a few weeks back Sharpton began getting all uppity to Obama, saying: “Just because you’re our color doesn’t mean you’re our kind.”

Well that was rude …

Or Jackson, who all but pledged his undying love for him in his U.S. Senate race, can barely bring himself to say, “All my heart leans toward Barack.”

Uh, OK – so are you endorsing him? “Well, there are many good candidates out there. …”

But this last week two prominent African-American state senators from South Carolina got gamey on Obama’s chances. State Sen. Robert Ford went so far as to say, “Every Democratic candidate running on that ticket would lose because he’s black and he’s at the top of the ticket. We’d lose the House, the Senate and the governors and everything.”

He added, “I’m a gambling man, I love Obama, but I’m not going to kill myself.”

Well, wait a second. The last time I checked no one was asking for self-mutilation, were they? And what’s with the “he would doom every race on the ticket” speak? I thought this was America; no one can stop you from achieving your dreams, blah, blah, blah.

Ford then clarified by adding that he had been “swayed” by calls from former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Hmm, curious minds would like to know what the plantation master and madam had to say during that little pep talk.

There was also a nasty little development that appears to have swayed Ford’s colleague state Sen. Darrell Jackson. According to published reports, Hillary “bribed,” I mean, uh – “purchased,” no wait – “paid for,” nope – “earned” Jackson’s “endorsement” for a price tag of $10,000 a month for the next 21 months. (That’s $210,000 for those you educated by American Federation of Teachers.)

Interestingly enough, no mention of this was disclosed when Ford and Jackson made their announcements of endorsement this week. Further, I’m still very curious why someone who “loves Obama” would begin thinking it would be suicide to vote for him.

The truth is African-American voters almost indescribably loved William Jefferson Clinton. They found him to be funny, flawed and ultimately forgivable. But Hillary is no Bill. Her mean countenance and demeanor are anything but warm, and while she is inestimably safer around interns of the opposite sex than her husband, she is anything but friendly. In fact, she comes across in nearly every venue as an exact representation of what she is – cold, strategic, hot tempered and ultimately unpleasant to be with.

Barack Obama, though I disagree with nearly every policy position he holds, is every bit as strategic as Hillary. He is also a nicer, smiling individual who for his severely misguided policies appears to love his wife and his beautiful little girls.

Hillary is in a pickle. She knows it.

She is the mean plantation madam who believes the slaves will love her more if she has them punished thrice daily, and she will resort to philosophical lynchings, intellectual rape and rhetorical beatings to get it done.

* Much more on the founding of the KKK by the Democrats in my new book, “MuscleHead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism with Commonsense Thinking.”