Thread: Can Huck hang on?

Politico
Can Huck hang on?
By: Jonathan Martin
December 30, 2007 12:54 PM EST

DES MOINES — Since becoming the Iowa front-runner, Mike Huckabee has been subjected to a month-long siege of media scrutiny and mostly unanswered attacks from his top rival — an onslaught that any presidential hopeful would be hard-pressed to survive.

Huckabee has found himself under the unforgiving glare of the front-runner’s spotlight, and his hopes to win here have now become severely threatened by it.

Although Huckabee remains in the lead in most public polling — and the GOP race is so fluid as to make predictions suicidal — Politico has learned that Mitt Romney’s latest internal polling shows the former Massachusetts governor has narrowed the gap significantly and is now in a virtual tie with Huckabee.

Huckabee’s slide can be explained by a series of inter-related factors. His rise came right as the media began to closely cover the campaign, he and his undermanned campaign organization have been ill-prepared to push back against broadsides from both the media and Romney, and his positions and rhetoric have drawn the enmity of a constellation of groups within the conservative establishment.

In many ways, Huckabee is having to wage the same fight against conservatives that John McCain did in 2000 while simultaneously running in the sort of hostile media environment that hamstrung John Kerry in 2004.

And he’s doing so without the experience in dealing with the national press corps that McCain had and with a shadow of the sort of all-star communications team that Kerry had in the trenches with him.

To make matters worse, as Huckabee’s challenges have grown more intense of late, he has lost the aide he brought on to handle his rapid-response and research operation.

Joe Carter, who took a leave from the Family Research Council to move down to the former Arkansas governor’s campaign headquarters in Little Rock, has returned to Washington, leaving a key position unfilled in the crucial final days before the caucuses.

With Carter gone — his last e-mail to reporters was Dec. 17 — Huckabee has been largely responding to every new story or attack that emerges himself, at times compounding the problem.

Battered in recent days over a variety of issues, including his unfounded assertion that Pakistanis make up the largest number of non-Hispanic immigrants coming over America’s southern border, Huckabee appeared on NBC’s “Todayâ€

Can Huck hang on?

Not with the weight of all those illegal aliens on him.

Dixie

Originally Posted by Dixie

Can Huck hang on?

Not with the weight of all those illegal aliens on him.

Dixie

VERY TRUE!!!