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Mike Huckabee's decision to turn the other cheek apparently cost his campaign roughly $150,000.

To put that into perspective, he could have hired 75 campaign staffers through February 5th or put up ~1000 points of television advertising in an Iowa market.

Per Politico:

Besides the commercial that Huckabee shared with reporters, there was an arsenal of additional paid media at the ready. There was more expensively produced TV footage filmed in anticipation of subsequent ads, a tough 60-second radio commercial ready to go and thousands of pamphlets hammering Romney on abortion just moments from being dropped.

“We had that teed up and ready to pull,” campaign manager Chip Saltsman said in an interview Tuesday, describing what was originally planned as a multipronged attack. “The mail was actually in the truck headed to the post office.”

Campaign Chairman Ed Rollins was philosophical about the about-face.

“You got to do what the candidate wants to do, what he’s comfortable with,” the veteran GOP consultant responded, when asked why an underfunded campaign would burn through so much money on material that won’t see daylight. “Once he said, ‘I’m not comfortable with this, this is not the way I want it,’ there was no discussion. It was his decision and I respect it.”

“The radio was even tougher [than the previewed TV ad] and the mail was tough,” Rollins added. The mailer went after Romney for his changed views on abortion, Rollins said, and the radio ad “was 60 seconds of what the TV was.”

Speaking from the second floor of the campaign’s downtown headquarters, where phone bankers were squeezed all around, Rollins said, “everybody is coming in here and saying, ‘Thank you, governor, for not being negative.’”

Huckabee is also flying out to California today for an appearance on the Tonight Show tonight.