Posted by
Steve on Thursday, December 20, 2007 8:25:37 AM
Things are righting themselves in the Republican primary race. The Huckaboom is ending. You can run a race with no money and take the elites by storm. But, it does take money to stay in the game. That is being shown in Iowa right now. Huckabee has almost no money. He has made magnificent use of what he has. But, he is limited on what he can buy for campaign ads. His surge of support has not resulted in any real increase in donations. This has meant that he is still underfunded when it comes to the campaign.
Mitt Romney is not underfunded. He has been able to raise campaign cash all along. Even when Huckabee was booming, Romney was steadily raising campaign cash. Campaign cash translates into commercials. Commercials will result in support for a candidate. We are starting to see the result of the latest Romney ad contrasting his record on crime with Huckabee’s record on crime. Before the commercial started, Huckabee had 39% support and Romney had 25% support. After the commercial had run a few days, Huckabee had 23-25% (depending on the poll) and Romney had 28%. Similar results are being seen in other states.
In reading the Hugh Hewitt article for this week at Townhall.com, he came to the conclusion that Mitt Romney has the inside track for the nomination. That is because he has campaign cash and a campaign organization. You need both to run an effective campaign nationally. Huckabee had a groundswell of support, but no campaign cash. Giuliani has a lot of campaign cash, but his organization on the ground is not there in many states. The other candidates lack either cash and/or organization in the states as well, usually both.
I have felt all along that Rudy Giuliani’s idea of waiting out the early contests and betting it all on Florida and the later contests was very risky. If one candidate took all the early states, he would be doomed. For a while it looked like Romney would win all three and Rudy looked like he would be in trouble. Then when Huckabee surged, Rudy looked smart again. But, with Huckabee falling Rudy looks in trouble again.
There are a couple of weeks until the Iowa Caucus. During that time we have Christmas and New Years. Getting out a message during that time period will be difficult. From now until Dec. 25, people will become more concerned with Christmas. On December 26, people usually are returning gifts that do not fit or finding bargains. You then have a couple of days where people will listen before New Years strikes and people do not listen for a few days. The Iowa Caucus is on January 3. There will not be much movement during the next couple of weeks among the candidates.