Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Arkansas political columnist John Brummett considers the first-quarter fundraising totals for the various candidates for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in his latest column for the Arkansas News Bureau. Brummett implies he doesn't think Huckabee can win the GOP nomination, but he wouldn't bet against him.

This being Arkansas, you might remember a guy named Mike Huckabee. He was a Baptist preacher who became governor of our state and lost a lot of weight. According to a Google search, he is actually a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination - a participant in the same race, if not same universe, as Romney, Giuliani and McCain.

Huckabee told a reporter with The Wall Street Journal that he'd raised about $500,000. I shouldn't make fun. Yet, I must.

Chip Saltsman, Huckabee's campaign manager imported from Tennessee and Bill Frist's implosion, returned my call to spin as best he could. He did well enough, asserting as follows: Huckabee has been running three months; those other guys have been running for six years. Huckabee showed up second in a poll of Iowa Republican county chairmen. This fascination with the campaign flirtations of Fred Thompson indicate a prevailing conservative dissatisfaction, but not with the second-tier alternatives like Huckabee, but with that too-liberal triumvirate at the top, meaning Giuliani, McCain and Romney. Does anyone remember Phil Gramm? He set fund-raising records in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, but didn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses.

Saltsman said something I agreed with. It was that some of these well-funded people will fade and, once people actually start voting, an alternative will catch fire, or at least capture a moment. It could be Huckabee with, say, an unlikely third in Iowa. Suddenly he'd be the toast of the pundits. And then, one figures, he'd get perfunctorily submerged by the money of Giuliani, Romney and McCain, presuming they'd saved any, even if they had to produce attack ads about his letting Wayne DuMond loose and growing government bigger in Arkansas than even Bill Clinton left it.

If all three of those front-runners faltered, there'd be Thompson and Newt Gingrich. They offer an excitement quotient that Huckabee doesn't.

I can't see how Huckabee pulls it off. But, then, there was a time when I would have bet his campaign treasury, if not Hillary's or Romney's, that he'd never finish a marathon.

Brummett's right, there are plenty of reasons why Huckabee can't win it. Too many better-known, better-funded candidates ahead of him have to all falter for him to break out of the second-tier pack.

But, then, there were plenty of reasons Huckabee couldn't win the Lt. Governor post in Arkansas back in the early '90s and yet he won it. And then he won two races for governor in a state that leans heavily Democratic.

Huckabee compiled a decent record in Arkansas - he certainly left the state in better shape than when he took over for the convicted Clinton ally Jim Guy Tucker.

But there is the charge that in his final term Huckabee grew government rather fast -something Huckabee's going to have to address if he is to become a viable alternative for fiscal conservatives looking for a candidate to support who isn't Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani or John McCain.

And there's that Wayne Dumond story that keeps getting batted around as if it's Willie Horton II with Huckabee cast in the role of Mike Dukakis.

I've heard Huckabee explain the Dumond case and it sounded reasonable, though I wasn't taking notes and I'm hazy now on the details. So, here's an offer to the Huckabee campaign, 'cause I think they read ElephantBiz.com:

Send me a statement from Gov. Huckabee about the Dumond case, and as much supporting materials and links as you can, and I'll publish it all here.  And if I were running Huckabee's campaign it would all be on the candidate's website, too. I'd even have him record a video explaining his handling of the Dumond case, and upload it to the campaign website and YouTube.

In the age of the distributed campaign, where every voter is a potential online pundit, independent maker of attack ads and influencer of dozens or hundreds or thousands of potential voters, the more info a candidate dumps online to promote their record and respond early, or even "pre-respond" to attacks, the better.