The Huckabee Puzzle
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA -- "I want to get something out of the way because there are some pretty crazy rumors going around that the Huckabee campaign is pulling out of Florida," Mike Huckabee said as he looked out into a crowd of 250 enthusiastic supporters at a jet hangar here.
"Well, it doesn't look like it to me! And we're not!"
Florida is an expensive state to campaign in and Huckabee has never had a lot of money. Major media outlets are reporting Huckabee is out of play in this state even though he's never explicitly said he is. The campaign is saying more events are planned in Florida following tomorrow night's Republican debate.
Huckabee later told reporters that he thinks journalists were drawing a false conclusion after learning the campaign would no longer make arrangements for a traveling press corps. He said it was "impractical" to have a press bus because of the "sheer size" of the state, and there were too many empty seats on the press plane. He did not address the matter of layoffs.
"Those news reports that our demise is imminent is much exaggerated," Huckabee said.
Some have speculated Huckabee lost in South Carolina because he spent so much time in Michigan. Those same people think Huckabee is committing Feb. 5 suicide by spending so much time in Florida.
Posed with this theory, Huckabee disagreed that campaigning in Michigan contributed to his loss in South Carolina. He argued the campaign would have turned out a "10 point win" had the Club for Growth not dumped $750,000 of negative ads and had Fred Thompson not campaigned on a constant fury of anti-Huckabee attacks.
"Elections are all pieces of a much larger puzzle," Huckabee continued. "I think a big thing people have to remember is that, unlike any election, this is going to come down to delegate count."
Which is why the Huckabee double strategy of campaigning in Florida and winning delegate votes can be puzzling in this winner-take-all state.
On the other hand, if doing well in Florida is a matter of beating expectations, then it's true expectations are very low. And there are few ways for members of the media to assess what his ground game is in the state.
Although Huckabee has been in Florida every day since Monday, he's been holding mostly closed press events. This poses two scenarios – that nothing is going on and the campaign doesn't want journalists to report about it. Or that something is happening and they don't want the national media to know.
Challenged again about how he plans to win in Florida, Huckabee said, "If money were the reason that people got all the votes, we never would have won Iowa. We wouldn't have placed well in New Hampshire and Michigan…We almost won South Carolina. We've been in contention in every state
"Some things that you may not see happening doesn't mean that nothing is happening," he continued. "We're doing a lot of things with grassroots organizations that aren't necessarily public events on the public calendar but there's an enormous amount of activity going on behind the scenes and underground that will show up on Tuesday.
Huckabee also answered to opportunities posed by reporters to criticize his opponents.
Rejecting the suggestion Mitt Romney would be better fit to lead the U.S. through the economic downturn, Huckabee said, " If one looks at [Romney's] business career, it is largely dealing with a capital company that took companies, often broke them apart, people lost jobs, didn't gain jobs. A lot of the money that was made within those companies ended up offshore. I'm not sure that that helps the American economy when you take people's money and you put it in Cayman Island bank accounts...If that's how we recover the America's economy, I'm not sure how many Americans benefit out of that."
Huckabee said, "Americans benefit when their government has policies that make it so people who are running small businesses and people who are working in jobs in factories keep those jobs."
Asked about whether John McCain was right on campaign finance reform, Huckabee said McCain would have to address that for himself. He did go on to call campaign finance reform one of the "greatest disasters in this country." He called the electoral process "not reformed but deformed."
"If you're extremely wealthy, you can write checks of tens of millions of dollars to your campaign and be credible – not because your ideas are resonating with people but because your checkbook is taken seriously at radio and television stations…But the fact is if you're a campaign like ours, you're limited to people who can only give you up to $2,300 per person"
He continued, "The other thing that has really made the system horrible is this proliferation of people who, then they can only give a certain amount of money to a candidate, then they funnel the money into Washington special interest groups, 527s…the really nasty stuff and do it anonymously. That is not real election reform at all
On receiving former presidential candidate Duncan Hunter's endorsement, Huckabee said, "nobody is going to be able to say I'm not a true conservative. Duncan Hunter is a conservative's conservative."
Asked about the debate tomorrow, Huckabee said his "plan" is to stay positive and "simply go in and try to get as many questions answered as I can. I've got a record I can be very proud to run on. I think I've got a platform I can be proud to present to the American people as a most viable platform to be President of the United States."