You wouldn’t want to play a drinking game pegged to the outright lies and distortions told at the event, hosted by Citizens United and Mike Huckabee, whose documentary “The Gift of Life” also premiered. It was attended by Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. (Mitt Romney and Ron Paul had other commitments.) It was the stuff of stomach-pumping. President Obama notoriously supported Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to overrule the FDA and keep Plan B away from most teenagers, but Bachmann made it sound like Obama wanted to give your tween daughter “the morning-after abortion” pill anyway. How’s that for compromise and reason? (Since it may need to be said again, emergency contraception doesn’t end a pregnancy. It prevents ovulation.) Nearly everyone made repeated references to federally funded abortions, which under the Hyde Amendment remain practically nonexistent. And Bachmann made her favorite baseless claim, that “repealing Obamacare” is a pro-life cause, despite the fact that the Affordable Care Act didn’t change the status quo on abortion coverage, much to pro-choicers’ disappointment.

Throughout the evening, it was clear that even though it feels like reproductive rights are under assault from every angle, anti-choicers still feel like they’re losing and that no one cares about them.

“Why is it that the pro-lifers are always told to stand against the wall?” asked Bachmann plaintively, assuring the audience that they wouldn’t have to wait their turn in a Bachmann administration. (They just might have to wait a very, very long time for a Bachmann administration.)

That sense of beleaguerment is Santorum’s specialty — it fuels resentment to have never experienced a bump in the polls. He mimicked the press asking him, “ ‘Are the social issues really as important? And isn’t just the economic issues? Oh, it’s just the economic issues.’ I always tell the press, has the vote yet been cast?” He insisted that abortion (and implicitly, homosexuality) “are not these unique set-aside issues.”

Then it got really motivational. “You may think we’re failures. We’re not. We’re not,” Santorum insisted.

It depends how you measure success. As I reported recently, the anti-choice movement has succeeded in passing lots of laws that make abortion odious, shaming and expensive, but they have no widespread public support for an outright ban of abortion, a handful of Iowa voters aside. Not only does the movement keep having its hand slapped by the federal courts, it’s split by a debate over how to push its legislative agenda in the first place. The incrementalists, however miserable they are making women’s lives, have a pretty strong argument that their way is best, even if they wouldn’t have gotten applause at the forum tonight.  A total ban in Mississippi, the Personhood amendment, that would also have gone after birth control and IVF, failed at the ballot box. Just today, the leader of the Ohio Senate suspended debate on the so-called Heartbeat Bill, which was trying to ban first-trimester abortions.

None of this is reason for pro-choicers to take a breather, but if anti-choicers feel like failures, it’s probably because the majority of the country doesn’t agree with them.

“Gov. Romney wants to fix Social Security. He doesn’t want to abolish it or end it,” Pawlenty said. “Gov. Perry has said in the past that he thought it was ‘failed.’”

In other words, Pawlenty thinks Romney is more electable and Rick Perry has too many positions and quotes that could be used against him in the general election.

Maggie Haberman notes that that Mike Huckabee, a guy who would’ve had a very good shot at the nomination had he decided to run, made that same point today, explicitly:

“What Tim [Pawlenty] is looking at is the fact that Mitt may be the most electable Republican,” said Huckabee….
[...]
Also, he said bluntly: “Perry hurt himself a lot with his Social Security talk and what he said may be technically true, but you go to South Florida or even any part of Florida or even the part where I live in the panhandle where you have a lot of retired people and essentially say that Social Security is a criminal enterprise, that’s problematic.”

So this segment of Republican elites does not think Perry is the best candidate to take on Barack Obama. You know who disagrees with them? Republican voters.

A new CNN poll shows that Republicans think Perry is the most electable candidate, “with 42 percent saying he has the best chance of beating Obama next year.” Romney’s at 26%. The story isn’t that Perry is the most electable — I think Huckabee is basically accurate — it’s that Republican voters have convinced themselves that Perry can win, because they like him the most.

A party is probably better off going with someone who excites people — like Barack Obama! — than someone who won the nomination because everyone convinced themselves that he was the most “electable” according to certain totally unscientific parameters — like John Kerry! — and the GOP always does well for itself by reaching just a bit further rightward than is currently politically acceptable. So Perry’s Social Security talk might hurt him in Florida. But Mitt Romney might strike everyone in America as an effete phony with no principles. Either one could win if the economic situation continues to suck. Perry’s only slightly higher risk, with potentially much greater reward.

God may have further hedged his bets too. According to BuzzFlash, “Tim Pawlenty’s 28-year-old wunderkind of a campaign manager, acknowledged that before he joined Team Pawlenty, he “prayed deeply” over his future path. Ayers concluded that God had “called” him “to a higher purpose,” and that higher purpose is leading Pawlenty to victory in November 2012.

Meanwhile, God reportedly made it very clear that he didn’t want Mike Huckabee to be president, “lest he take his focus off the much more important task of producing a series of conservative American history DVDs,” reports Amira.

While Santorum, Bachmann and Cain all claim God’s endorsement, it’s worth noting that, despite the deity’s posited omnipotence, his campaign support isn’t always a golden ticket: Huckabee said God wanted him to be president in 2007 and Sarah Palin’s VP run was reportedly “God’s plan” (although I suppose that all worked out rather well in the end for the Alaskan former governor). And, to be fair, George W. Bush said God wanted him to run the country, and despite trials such as election results, that happened.

Notably God did not seem to endorse Newt Gingrich. But nonetheless, it’s not a great track record for a supposedly Supreme Being and looking at his 2012 bets, hedged as they are, it doesn’t look like a divine endorsement is as heavenly as one might hope.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza (and head of the restaurant industry’s lobbying organization), has been unfairly written off as an unserious candidates by the elites, because he’s never won an election to anything before and he’s very silly. But GOP voters have caught Cain fever. After Frank Luntz’s focus group almost unanimously declared Cain the “winner” of the May 5 South Carolina debate, Cain took the Georgia Republican Party convention by storm and won the Tea Party Fort Lauderdale straw poll. As Tea Party Fort Lauderdale goes, so goes Tea Party West Des Moines.

Nate Silver has declared Cain “the most Huckabee-like of the other Republican candidates,” according to his mystic number sorcery. Cain is the thin, black Huckabee with private sector experience. He is unstoppable.

Sure, he has absolutely no clue what to even say on foreign policy and his sole domestic policy prescription seems to be the rebranded flat tax, and a great deal of his support seems to be related to white Republicans’ resentful touchiness about being accused of hating Barack Obama for reasons informed by his race, but none of that changes the fact that Herman Cain will definitely be our second black president.

The key word in that statement may be “explore.” As Taegan Goddard pointed out earlier, it would be legally problematic if Huckabee were to use his Fox News platform to formally declare a presidential candidacy. But he could probably get away with saying that he’s decided to leave the show and that he’ll be looking into the possibility of maybe eventually launching a 2012 campaign.

It may be that his hand is being forced. Huckabee has tried to remain above the GOP fray, refusing to participate in candidate cattle calls and to accept debate invitations, but a report earlier this month suggested that Fox executives — who previously suspended likely White House candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum from their roles as paid commentators — had given him until the end of May to declare whether he was running. (Huckabee’s camp has disputed this, contending that the former Arkansas governor won’t make any decision until sometime this summer.)

It’s also possible, of course, that he’ll use the occasion to put the White House chatter to rest, declaring that he has no intention of even exploring a presidential run next year and reaffirming his commitment to his television show.

But it’s hard to ignore his producer’s use of the word “explore.” There would be no need to be so precise if Huckabee were simply planning to say he doesn’t want to run for president. It may be a head fake, but it sure seems like he’s ready to take a serious step toward running.

If he does enter the race, Huckabee would be formidable. Not only does he consistently run at or near the top of the GOP pack in polls, but he also consistently ranks (among Republicans) as one of the most broadly popular national figures — with positive ratings much higher than any of the other likely ’12 candidates. Huckabee’s 2008 campaign was cursed by its image as an amateur operation, and by his inability to draw significant support from non-Christian conservatives. Polls suggest he’s broadened his appeal since then, although the scrutiny of a presidential campaign could undo the progress he’s made and force him back into the role of a niche candidate.

At the very least, Huckabee — who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses by 9 points — would enter the race as the prohibitive favorite in the lead-off caucus state. Much like Bob Dole in the run-up the 1996 campaign, he would run with the title “President of Iowa” – meaning that the pressure to post another convincing victory there would be high.