Political pollster Nate Silver says Mike Huckabee may be better served waiting

Political pollster Nate Silver says Mike Huckabee may be better served waiting out this next election.Statistician Nate Silver’s thing is to eliminate the guesswork and come up with solid numbers. (Like he did when he called Obama’s victory…eight months before it happened.) So instead of just asking “if” the commutation of suspected cop-killer Maurice Clemmons’ sentence will hurt former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s political future, Silver is asking “how much.”Using a formula he created for just such a scandal, Silver predicts Huckabee’s chances of winning the 2012 Republican nomination dropped about three percent, from 11 to eight. This may all be for naught though, says Silver, because Huckabee is actually leaning towards waiting until 2016.The 2016 race, indeed, could be a better bet for Huckabee on several levels: he won’t have to run against an incumbent; Sarah Palin will probably have burned herself out; the current, strongly libertarian brand of economic populism (which does not play to Huckabee’s more communitarian leanings) is liable to have faded, and the impact of the Clemmons killings, such as it is, may be somewhat diminished.