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Pryor facts hurt Huckabee theory Saturday, Oct 13, 2007 By Doug Thompson There was a theory once. Mike Huckabee would raise a bunch of money before quitting the presidential race. Then he'd run against U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, taking his presidential campaign war chest with him. Scratch that idea. Our former governor's raised an embarrassing $1 million in the last three months in his presidential bid. Incredibly, he's still doing so well he shouldn't drop out. Pryor had $3.27 million in campaign funds on hand as of Sept. 30, federal records show. That's $1 million for a Republican presidential candidate who's expected to come in third (possibly better) in the Iowa caucus, versus $565,000 raised during the same amount of time by a U.S. Senator from Arkansas who doesn't yet face an announced opponent. Ouch. Part of the ex-governor's lack of money is Huckabee's fault, but not all of it - not even most of it. Huckabee's not a bad candidate. He did very well in the Iowa Straw Poll through sheer eloquence. Yet he's raised about one-tenth as much as the GOP's front-runners. Big political donors are like bettors at the racetrack. Their money goes to who they think is going to win. The only difference is they can place bets against somebody, too, to try and keep that candidate from winning. There are a limited number of donors nationwide who believe a GOP candidate can win. Others hope Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., can be stopped. Neither group's betting on the longshots, however eloquent. Many who can't or won't bet on Clinton contributed to Barack Obama. The supposed Democratic wunderkind raised much of his money in rich suburbs in the eastern United States, communities that used to be GOP cash cows. A first-term Senator from Illinois was considered by many to be a better bet to stop Clinton than anybody in the GOP field. Ouch. Suppose that Huckabee goes after Pryor for the Senate anyway. Look at the number of retirements and so forth the GOP has had from the Senate. GOP Senate campaigns are also getting far less money than they used to. The GOP will have to struggle hard to win open seats and protect vulnerable incumbents. It will not have money to spare to help a former governor who can't raise his own cash. However personally popular Huckabee is, he would be in a race against an incumbent U.S. senator who cannot be considered vulnerable. The Arkansas Democratic Party would relish the chance to end, or at least damage, the career of Huckabee, the most electable GOP candidate in recent Arkansas history (at least since the death of Win Rockefeller.) Pryor's re-election bid may also come during a Hillary for President campaign. Huckabee's best bet is to stay the course. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) Seriously, a slim shot for president beats an equally bad or slightly better shot at Senator. You can lose a presidential nomination bid and survive. Ronald Reagan did. George H.W. Bush did. Richard Nixon did, although he's not the best of examples. It's harder to survive a losing U.S. Senate race in your home state. Things won't always be so tough for Republicans. I remember Watergate. People openly speculated on how many decades it would take for the Republicans to recover. One presidential term by Jimmy Carter started the Reagan era - 12 years of GOP control of the White House. Everybody's talking about the Republican hangover. Most have forgotten the size of the binge. After all, President Bush made his appointments to the Supreme Court. (In a twist, this takes much of the fire and urgency out of the next presidential election for many voters. They got what they wanted.) Bush and his party had control of the Congress for six years. He is still the only president in history to increase his party's Congressional majority in a midterm election (in 2002.) As recently as three years ago, people were talking about the permanent Republican majority. Now Fred Thompson is considered a last hope. This wandering in the wilderness is going to be tough. I never understood why Thompson was considered the most likely savior of the GOP. He seems like a pleasant enough man who has no major vices. Maybe that's all of it. Maybe that's all you need to be considered a Republican savior these days. Ouch. -------- Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
