With yesterday’s Des Moines Register poll showing former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee out in the lead for the first time, some members of the Republican base must be pinching themselves to make sure it’s not a dream. And often, the question that pundits want to answer is who does this hurt?
But if I may offer an alternative idea, it might be more interesting to wonder who this development helps. And I think the answer could be Rudy Giuliani.
New York City’s former mayor and the Hamptons’ favorite visitor has all but given up on winning any of the first wave of primaries/caucuses. His staff announced in November that Giuliani will enter the February 5 “national primary” with a lead in the total number of delegates because he will win Florida, a large state with a winner take all primary. Once Giuliani wins Florida on January 29, they say, he will have a higher delegate total going into the Republican National Convention than any of his opponents who win the first set of races. And he’ll build on that momentum to seal the deal on February 5 when 22 states will pick their candidates.
Huckabee’s gains could help Giuliani work this strategy out. While Huckabee is leading in the polls in Iowa, no one is predicting he’s going to run away with January’s early Republican contests. The real impact of this development is that Huckabee may weaken the three “frontrunners” other than Giuliani, that is Romney, McCain, and Thompson. The four are competing for the moniker of “real conservative” much more than Giuliani ever has, and Huckabee’s rise is most likely taking away from their votes.
So what scenario could come to pass? Huckabee, McCain, or Romney could jostle for victory in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina with none winning a decisive victory. Giuliani will head into Florida, where polls show him doing fine, and win the first decisive victory of the campaign. Ultimately, that’s what Giuliani’s people may be hoping for.
But don’t worry: Huckabee is getting drawn into the sights of his opponents. The misty eyed gazes at Huckabee, the “gee, there still are some honest Republicans out there” carpet the media has rolled out, these things will soon get vacuumed up by the desire for a bad story to go with the good.
Take a look at this laundry list of Huckabee’s transgressions ginned up by the San Diego Union Tribune:
Used campaign funds to pay himself $14,000 for being his own media consultant.
We could go on in this vein, but space is limited. The bottom line: Mike Huckabee has an awful lot of explaining to do. And neither voters nor the national media should let the man Arkansas journalists call the “Huckster” get away with pretending that tough questions over his tawdry ethics record amount to mudslinging.
That may be all the anchor Huckabee needs to get knocked down a peg or two. And for a man who never got that high up the ladder, that might be enough.
6 Responses to “Could Giuliani benefit from Huckabee’s rise?”
That’s the best they can gin up? There’s precious few effective negative ads in that pile of misdemeanors.
The more important factor – if someone comes roaring out of both Iowa and New Hampshire with wins and media attention and momentum, Rudy’s lead in Florida may not look big enough.
Lol! longest comment ever…
Where is lower case matt?
[...] Maybe I was wrong. [...]
Something to say?
This is a very interesting idea but I think it relies on way to many dominoes falling into place.
First, its very hard to win the later states if you don’t do well in the early ones because those early victories create huge media buzz and somewhere along the way the media will stop talking about the polls long enough to explain to their viewers who these candidates that keep winning primaries are. Giuliani has been banking on his mythic persona as “America’s Mayor” and “The Hero of 9/11″ to carry him in states where other candidates wont have a chance to let voters get to know them personally, but after seeing some of the latest Iowa and New Hampshire poles his strategists have clearly gotten nervous.
Second, don’t underestimate Mike Huckabee. More accurately, don’t underestimate how desperate the GOP is for a bonafide Christain conservative. It’s true that Huckabee has an uphill battle when it comes to fiscal conservatism and these anecdotes from the San Diego Union Tribune are pretty damning, but the republican base have proven capable of overlook far worse with other candidates.
Third, fund raising is definitely a problem for Huckabee, especially in later states where victories are bought with pricey TV and radio ads, but this can be taken care of by the key factors in my first two points–Momentum and Desperation. Recall that Fred Thompson raised over $4 million before even officially entering the race simply because republicans wanted so badly to believe that he would be better than anything else in the current field.
The press has slowly been turning on Mr. 9/11 and I bet that if he does poorly in IA, NH and SC they’ll have no problem putting him out on the curb with all the other GOP unlikelies. I’m not saying that Huckabee is inevitable, but Giuliani is far from likely.
Left by ameeks
December 3, 2007 at 4:12pm