Uh, oh. The GOP primary race just got shaken up a little.
As expected, Mitt Romney came in first in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll. He was never going to not come in first, having spent millions of dollars on the contest. Frankly, his first-place finish is almost a non-event, considering how crazily he outspent the rest of the field on advertising, bus transportation, delegate tickets, and campaign "walking around money."
But, who came in second? It was a candidate who spent practically nothing compared to Romney - former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
He had no buses. He has not run any ads in Iowa. His tent was the least impressive of the bunch. He spent between $125,000 and $150,000 on the event, according to his campaign manager. And he only bought 1,850 tickets. Yet in the end, he got 2,587 votes. That means about 700 people either paid for their own ticket, had a ticket paid for by a third-party group or fooled another campaign into thinking they would vote for him. [Huckabee was supported, along with other candidates, by Fair Tax, an organization that wants to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax.]Huckabee's come-from-behind silver medal in Ames is the kind of story journalists love. I wouldn't be surprised if the next week finds Romney completely overshadowed, with Huckabee celebrated as the de facto winner - David, to Romney's Goliath.
By any measure, this is a huge win for Huckabee, and a confirmation of his grassroots support in Iowa. He still has a long way to go, and no one knows what will happen when Fred Thompson jumps in the race, but this silver medal could finally bring some real money into his tiny campaign war chest. Stay tuned.
The big loser this weekend was somebody who didn't show up in Iowa, and in fact hasn't even bothered to show up in the race yet - Fred Thompson.
By the time Freddie K-Street finally ambles into the race, if he ever does, he might find that there's a new heartthrob in town. All the Republicans are looking for is somebody with a better-than-snowball's chance at beating Obama or Hillary next year. The sole reason so many of them have projected their hopes onto a cipher like Thompson was their disgust at the prospect of being stuck with Giuliani, Romney, or McCain. Now, arguably, they have a credible alternative, and one who actually seems to want the job.
Thompson's candidacy always sounded like a joke to me, but if he was serious, it looks like he played it coy just a little longer than he should have.
Huckabee could fizzle, but I suspect he won't. For religious conservatives, Huckabee, a Baptist Minister, is the real deal. For pragmatic Republicans, the second-place finish in Iowa gives him some "electability" street cred. It would not surprise me to see a whole bunch of people who barely knew his name on Friday jumping onto the back of Mike Huckabee's campaign bus in the weeks and months ahead.
1 comments:
Which brings me to why Huckabee will not be president.
A fundamental, all-at-once overhaul of this nation's tax structure is a non-starter in the current political environment. The tax code, while always of interest to one degree or another, is simply not where the passions of Americans lie right now. At this moment in history, the American imagination is consumed with one issue: national security.
Maybe in a world where people are not literally afraid of being blown up today, tomorrow, or the next day, there would be enough room in the national consciousness for a debate about the tax structure. But if Steve Forbes couldn't make Americans feel invested in the idea of a flat tax in 1996, during the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years, Mike Huckabee cannot sell it in 2008. Frankly, he would do just as well to base his campaign on a return to the gold standard.
If Huckabee really wants to capture the national imagination with a Big Idea, he should try energy indpendence - something which relates directly to national security, and which one could reasonably present as a relief to the omnipresent dread of terrorism that George W. Bush has spent six years cultivating.
If Barack Obama's campaign of Hope succeeds in lifting the fog of fear from the American mind, FairTax advocates could find people at least willing to discuss the issue in 2012. The pragmatic, reassuring competence of a President Hillary Clinton could make Americans receptive to such a debate as well.
But there are only so many Big Ideas that Americans have the energy to care about, and at this particular moment, a complete overhaul of the tax code will have to stand in line and wait its turn. If Huckabee wants to be seen as a credible candidate for the presidency, rather than as a one-issue sideshow, he will accept that fact sooner rather than later.
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