by Jason George
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Huckabee has conceded, taking to the stage two and a half hours after polls closed and telling the crowd that he had just called McCain to congratulate him.
“Obviously tonight we wanted to come here and declare a South Carolina victory – we got awful close.”
“I want to remind you politics, and in particular this year, is a process,” he added.
“It is a process, and the process is far, far from over.”
Speaking before a quarter-filed room at the Columbia Convention Center, Huckabee said in his five-minute remarks that he was leaving South Carolina with no regrets.
“Tonight is not a time to start asking ‘what if?’ it’s a time to start asking ‘what now?’ I feel like in our effort here we gave everything we had. We left it all on the field,” he said.
“We just finished one of the quarters of play.”
Huckabee heads to Little Rock tonight and then to Texas for the Chuck Norris BBQ later in the day Sunday.