|
|
| |
| Wed, Dec. 3, 2008 |  |
 |
|
||
| |
Whatever happened to Mike Huckabee? Thursday, Apr 5, 2007 By John Brummett We've finished the first reporting period for money-raising by presidential candidates and it's an obscenely record year already. Something really needs to be done about campaign treasuries of these breathtaking sizes and an evolving primary dynamic that compresses so many state events early in the process. The nominations will be determined over a month, from mid-January to Valentine's Day of next year. It makes our next president all about celebrity and bucks, and nothing about fluidity or message or momentum. While we couldn't do much worse than what we've had, I'd remind you we got stuck with the guy we've got mostly because his kingmakers got out there early in 1999 and raised prohibitive amounts. Hillary Clinton has put together $36 million, counting $10 million in transferable U.S. Senate campaign dollars. Mitt Romney reports $23 million, Rudy Giuliani $15 million, John Edwards $14 million and John McCain a "disappointing" $12 million. No one has ever produced numbers this early like these before. One factor: For the first time, candidates could raise money this year for both the primaries and general elections, meaning donations could be doubled. Clinton, unlike the other war-chest leaders, availed herself of that option. She can't spend some of her money unless she gets the nomination, in other words. Either way, nearly all the big guns have raised so much money that they can't afford to accept federal matching, which would come with caps. So much, again, for regulation of big money in politics. This being Arkansas, you might remember a guy named Mike Huckabee. He was a Baptist preacher who became governor of our state and lost a lot of weight. According to a Google search, he is actually a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination - a participant in the same race, if not same universe, as Romney, Giuliani and McCain. Huckabee told a reporter with The Wall Street Journal that he'd raised about $500,000. I shouldn't make fun. Yet, I must. Chip Saltsman, Huckabee's campaign manager imported from Tennessee and Bill Frist's implosion, returned my call to spin as best he could. He did well enough, asserting as follows: Huckabee has been running three months; those other guys have been running for six years. Huckabee showed up second in a poll of Iowa Republican county chairmen. This fascination with the campaign flirtations of Fred Thompson indicate a prevailing conservative dissatisfaction, but not with the second-tier alternatives like Huckabee, but with that too-liberal triumvirate at the top, meaning Giuliani, McCain and Romney. Does anyone remember Phil Gramm? He set fund-raising records in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, but didn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses. Saltsman said something I agreed with. It was that some of these well-funded people will fade and, once people actually start voting, an alternative will catch fire, or at least capture a moment. It could be Huckabee with, say, an unlikely third in Iowa. Suddenly he'd be the toast of the pundits. And then, one figures, he'd get perfunctorily submerged by the money of Giuliani, Romney and McCain, presuming they'd saved any, even if they had to produce attack ads about his letting Wayne DuMond loose and growing government bigger in Arkansas than even Bill Clinton left it. If all three of those front-runners faltered, there'd be Thompson and Newt Gingrich. They offer an excitement quotient that Huckabee doesn't. I can't see how Huckabee pulls it off. But, then, there was a time when I would have bet his campaign treasury, if not Hillary's or Romney's, that he'd never finish a marathon. A postscript: Huckabee's frustration might have been revealed the other day when he said Republicans will owe Clinton an apology if they vote in this presidential primary in a way that indicates they don't care about personal conduct. That was a pretty straight shot at Giuliani's checkered romantic history. What good is being the preacher in the race if Republicans get tolerant all of a sudden? ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
