Huckabee Surging in Florida?
November 28th, 2007 at 05:07am Mark Noonan
Over at Real Clear Politics, they take note of a new Insider Advantage poll showing Huckabee rising from 8% support in October to 17% support in November; Giuliani still leads the GOP field, but has fallen from 33% support to 26%.
With Brownback out, Huckabee is the natural home of conservative Evangelical voters, and his rise in the Florida poll may be an indicator that the Evanglicals are gravitating to him. This doesn’t mean that Huckabee is about to sweep to the nomination, but it is the sort of thing which can keep him going at least until Super Tuesday even if he doesn’t win in Iowa and New Hampshire.
And that, in turn, brings up my basic theory about 2008 - there’s no way to tell what is really happening out there. Certainly, the big boys (and girl) in the race have the advantage, but that is mostly a money and name recognition advantage. There isn’t…well, its hard to put it, but there isn’t any “romance”, as it were, for any of the candidates. There isn’t a Reagan or a Kennedy, or even a Stevenson or a McGovern out there who is commanding diehard devotion from a large segment of the electorate.
As we know, in the primaries it doesn’t really matter what your national numbers are, but what your numbers are in the various State by State contests. Huckabee might be unknown to 75% of the American people, but if he ends up supported by 40% of the people in an early primary State (like Florida), that could be enough to propel him into the front ranks where, as a new face in a tired political field, he can light a fire if he can convey the right message at the right moment. On the Democrat side, there is also this possibility - though a lesser possibility as the second tier Democrats are mostly DC insiders, certainly one of the least popular class of people in the United States these days.
As I keep saying, get ready for a very interesting 2008 election.
Huckabee Website, Giuliani Website
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Republicans
22 Comments
1. Dittohead4Life | November 28th, 2007 at 5:14 am
I think a Giuliani/Huckabee ticket is a winning combo, no matter who the Donkaroaches nominate.
Spook, neocon, it’s me–attack dog! I’m on hiatus from America Blog; no trolling until after Christmas and the New Year. I was becoming addicted to trolling, so I had to enroll in a 12-step program to break the addiction. In fact, I’m cutting back all blogging, until I get my resume done. I’m gonna need a job when the wife and I go to England, and I hope I don’t have to settle for handing out rental shoes at the bowling alley…
2. Repulicans Presidential E&hellip | November 28th, 2007 at 5:34 am
[...] Mark Noonan added an interesting post on Huckabee Surging in Florida?Here’s a small excerpt [...]
3. Bull | November 28th, 2007 at 6:04 am
huckabee has been my man all along. i like his message. i think he’d be the perfect candidate and a great president. i have serious doubts that he will get the nomination, but he will be on the ticket regardless.
4. Eric T | November 28th, 2007 at 6:55 am
It’s pretty amazing how well he is doing with the little amount of money his campaign has.
5. neocon | November 28th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Good luck with that 12 step program attack dog. Good to hear from you and you could do worse than handing out bowling shoes.
I like Huckabee - a lot. BUT, I am worried he doesn’t have what it takes to win the general and, in my opinion, ‘08 is a must win.
6. Bull | November 28th, 2007 at 8:38 am
neocon, that is a ligit concern, but i think this election is going to be about the message and not the politics.
we’ve been bombarded with negativity for the last 7 years and it will continue up to election day.
i believe the american people are tired of it. the dems can’t run on an agenda. nobody would vote for it. nobody wants their taxes raised. wants open boarders. wants a weaker defense. wants nationalized health care. so the dems platform will be to go negative and sling the mud without saying anything of substanance.
if the GOP can stay on message of getting back to being the GOP the white house is ours for the next 8 years. huckabee has a message. and it won’t be easy to sling mud at him.
7. neocon | November 28th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I can’t disagree with you Bull. Like I said, I like Huckabee, I am just hesitant about his ability to have broader appeal.
We absolutely, can not, let Clinton, Obama or Edwards win the WH next year.
8. Retired Spook | November 28th, 2007 at 8:51 am
and it won’t be easy to sling mud at him.
Bull, I guess that’s one of, if not the main thing that attracts me to Huckabee also. If he has skeletons in his closet, no one has found them yet. By most accounts he did a pretty decent job as Governor of Arkansas. So I think one could safely say that he’s both honest and competent — a good combination in my book.
9. Bull | November 28th, 2007 at 8:55 am
i used to train a guy that i called “michael moore” junior. big time lib. got along with him real well except for politics. anyways, i asked him after the 04 election who he thought would get the nomination in 08. hillary? he said that if hillary was put up there, they might as well hand the keys to the white house to the republicans for the next 8 years.
he was high on obama. but i don’t think he could win against anybody in the general election. and edwards scares the bee-jesus out of me. the fact that he was almost second in command is frightening enough. i live in north carolina and he is despised here. he was elected to the senate and did nothing. he’s rubbed so many people in this state wrong that even his own party doesn’t like him much. he’s a tool of the highest order. he owns all of the negative stereotypes about lawyers. he’s a snake oil salesman. he’s got no shot.
hillary is the only one that can win the general election but i don’t think she’ll pull it off. her negatives are too much. she’s too polarizing of a figure. and she has no message.
10. Retired Spook | November 28th, 2007 at 9:36 am
and she has no message.
Oh come on now; how can you say that? She’s been a “advocate” for children, and she’s fought hard for lots of things. She has an uncanny ability to make subpeoned records magically disappear and reappear out of thin air without having to even give an explanation. She’s a master of obfuscation and spin, and has minions around her that are even better at it than she is. Even her friends comment on how easily and convincingly she lies. What more could you want in a candidate?
11. Almiranta | November 28th, 2007 at 11:45 am
I just sent a check to the Huckabee campaign, which I had been planning to do but was spurred by the recent post by a Lib bigot attacking him on his religious beliefs. That energized me for two reasons.
One was yet another peek into the dark and murky fever swamp of the uber-Lib mindset, which is always pretty creepy, and the other, related, reason was that this peek told me that these rabid All Hate All The Time see Huckabee as a threat.
Cool.
He has all the attirbutes of every other Republican candidate, and as far as I can see none of the negatives.
I like Mitt, and am totally PO’d at the smear campaign about him “flip-flopping” particularly on abortion. Millions of people have started out thinking that it was really a matter of choice, and it was so easy to be FOR “choice” without really delving into the consequences of those choices. I read a story about an operating room nurse who participated in dozens and dozens of abortions, being for “choice”, till during a partial birth abortion the partially delivered baby grabbed her finger and hung on for dear life, thrashing in agony as instruments were shoved into its skull. SHE “flip-flopped”.
Anyway, I think Mitt has drawn so much fire, and will be so targeted by hate-driven religious bigots, that he is being weakened every day. You know the Dem mantra: “To hell with qualifications: How can we destroy him”.
But Mike Huckabee has only one problem that I can see, and that is a kind of non-presidential name. He’s smart, personable, experienced, a proven leader, has good ideas, and all in all I think he is going to end up being the man to beat.
12. Parker | November 28th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Millions of people have started out thinking that it was really a matter of choice, and it was so easy to be FOR “choice” without really delving into the consequences of those choices.
So its ok to be FOR choice before you were AGAINST choice.
Oh - that’s right, flip floppers only come from the ‘donk side’.
13. Parker | November 28th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
btw - I like Huckabee also, save for the name (Dittohead would have fun with that one if he were on the other side).
You know how those Arkansas governors can come out of shadows…
Really, I think ‘08 will come down whether people are going to vote for or against Hillary, regardless of who else runs. Just as ’04 was really a matter of voting for or against Bush regardless of who ran against him.
14. Brian Gregory | November 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I firmly agree with Dittohead4Life: a Giuliani-Huckabee (or even vice versa) ticket is unbeatable.
That being said, Huckabee is also now leading in Iowa. FINALLY, after months of RoboMitt domination. I can’t see anyone but Giuliani winning in Florida right now, but Huckabee seems to be surging everywhere except the libertarian states (New Hampshire, etc.).
15. phnx | November 28th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Huckabee needs to convince me that he’s not soft on the illegal alien issue. He’s now saying he supports border security, but he has supported rights and benefits for illegals in the past.
16. bongoman | November 28th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Huckabee needs to convince me that he believes that the earth rotates around the sun and that the moon orbits the earth.
17. sleepygene | November 28th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Dildohead4life & Brian-
You think Giuliani/Huckabee is a good ticket, huh? Do you think Giuliani will be hurt by revelations that he charged the good people of NYC for booty calls with his mistress in 1999,2000 & 2001? I like Huck, he is authentic and seems good natured.
http://www.politco.com/news/stories/1107/7073.html
18. plainjane | November 28th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Things are looking up for the Huckster. He has fooled Repugs that he is a conservative and better yet, it appears Rudy has another juicy story out there. Appears he was spending NY tax dollars on security to visit his mistress in the Hamptons; oh those family valued Republicans.
19. Mark Noonan | November 28th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Brian,
Indeed - and it does seem that more and more Evangelicals are going to Huckabee…what remains to be seen is where conservative Catholics wind up. We’re an odd lot, ya know?
20. Almiranta | November 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Parker, I seldom resort to out and out name-calling, but for you, there is no other choice.
You are an idiot.
You say, in what you obviously think is a very clever manner (I can see the smirk as I read your words…) “So its ok to be FOR choice before you were AGAINST choice.”
Only a truly dedicated radical Lib could possibly not only miss the point of what I wrote, but twist the basic principle so badly.
The point, Parker, is that it is NOT just a matter of “choice”. Duh. Double Duh.
It is not and never has been a simple matter of “choice”. Not unless you can lump in all other areas where the taking of a human life is also just a matter of “choice”. There are plenty- I want his car, I want his job, I want his wife, he plays his TV too loud at night, he looks funny—-when and if the taking of a human life is simple a matter of “choice” then there are a lot of “choices” out there.
You do realize the insanity of laws which make it OK for a WOMAN to kill her unborn baby, but which allow her to declare that she has “CHOSEN” to think of it as a valuable human being if its life is taken during the commission of a crime? The utter bizarre insanity of saying a woman—or anyone else–can exert “choice” to determine of an unborn child is a person or not?
What makes people change their minds on abortion is the realization that the issue goes far beyond giving a woman, any woman, permission to act cruelly and irresponsibily and selfishly by claiming she is ENTITLED to do so based on her ‘right’ to “choice”.
It is the realization that the real issue is that a human life is destroyed. And it is the realization that the clever use of the word “choice” is an Orwellian effort to cloak a despicable act in a word that lures some by its superficial appearance of fairness and the higher moral ground.
And BTW, Parker, if YOU are truly committed to “choice” then I am sure you back school vouchers, to allow parents and students to have “choice” in their educational decisions, and of course you are firmly in favor of allowing college students to “choose” which people they want to hear speak, unfettered by radical disruptions.
Or are you possibly one of those two-faced Lefties who thinks that depriving an innocent infant of the “choice” to live is really a noble goal, and that the only TRUE “choice” you back is the “choice” of a woman to kill her baby, while the movement itself makes all the other “choices” such as who gets to speak on college campuses and who will teach their children—and what they will be taught?
Idiot.
Whereas plainjane is just plain goofy, though I must admit she seasons her goofiness with a nastiness seldom seen anywhere but on the radical far left. Janie, if you can’t actually contribute TO THE DISCUSSION please don’t pester us with your vile little brain farts.
21. Parker | November 29th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Parker, I seldom resort to out and out name-calling, but for you, there is no other choice.
You are an idiot.
If you bothered to take the time to read what I wrote in context, you would have realized that I was simply disagreeing with you regarding Romney’s flip flopping. I made no mention of my stand on abortion. If you also read any of my other posts, you would realize that I am not a radical anything (as opposed to yourself). You took upon yourself to fly off on a moronic rant that had nothing to do with my post. You either couldn’t grasp the meaning of my post, or you went on a ridiculous tirade over my disagreeing with you over Romney. Either way I would have to conclude that you, Almiranta are the idiot here (…and I rarely resort to name calling).
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