IS IT MCCAIN OR HUCKABEE?
January 14, 2008
by Charles Bierbauer
There is no clear Republican leader, but there may be an emerging two-man race for the party’s presidential nomination. The caucus and primary victories of Mike Huckabee in Iowa and John McCain in New Hampshire have set the stage for a face-off in the South Carolina primary on Saturday as the survivors for the long road still ahead.
Of course, Mitt Romney could alter the equation by winning Michigan’s primary on Tuesday. If that happens, delete this story and wait for further developments while we change the crystals in our crystal ball.
There’s no question McCain has been on the big bounce post-New Hampshire. He’s gained ground in both Michigan and South Carolina. Huckabee would be satisfied with a respectable third place in Michigan, but thinks he can win South Carolina.
When I chatted with Huckabee after his Saturday night rally in Columbia, he was quite happy with the premise that a two-man McCain-Huckabee race was evolving. Just call it Huckabee-McCain, he suggested.
Funny thing, politics. Only a couple of months ago, McCain’s campaign was foundering. Huckabee’s campaign had not yet found its footing. Both were operating on shoe strings, McCain having squandered sizeable resources and Huckabee still searching for the key to turn on the funding taps. Winning even a single early state can lead to a change of fortune.
Romney, the first to run campaign ads in South Carolina months ahead of his opponents, is off the air here and concentrated in Michigan. His campaign says it did not “pull” its television ads, but just didn’t renew the ad buy. That’s hair-splitting that may not matter after Tuesday. Or the Romney campaign could be scrambling Wednesday to find whatever air-time is unsold.
Television stations across the state are inundated with political ads. Even Ron Paul is on the air—and in the air with a blimp, or is that just a YouTube illusion?
This past week’s Republican debate in Myrtle Beach highlighted two battles going on among the candidates. Huckabee and Fred Thompson are wrestling for the evangelical vote. McCain and Romney pointedly talked about Michigan as well as South Carolina.
A Fox focus group seemed to think Thompson had won the debate. Huckabee aides say Thompson only beat low expectations.
Rudy Giuliani is gambling there will still be a race for him to contest beyond South Carolina. There likely will be in Florida and the 22-state mega vote on February 5th. But Giuliani will be coming off the starting blocks when the survivors of the earlier primaries have rolling momentum.
The nature of the primary season changes dramatically beyond South Carolina. Multiple states are in play at once. Big states, such as California and New York, where the cost of television ad time is dramatically higher. Western states where McCain, an Arizonan, would expect to do well. More Southern states where Huckabee, an Arkansan, hopes for strong support.
The Democrats, for all practical purposes, seem to already be in a two-candidate race, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. John Edwards won South Carolina in 2004, but against a cool New Englander, not the likes of Obama and Clinton.
McCain, in contrast, would welcome a reversal of his previous experience in this state. In 2000, McCain lost South Carolina after a malicious campaign of falsehoods launched by supporters of George Bush.
The State newspaper on Sunday endorsed McCain, an endorsement the paper’s editors said they should have made eight years ago. Who knows how many South Carolina voters might also think McCain deserves a better shake than they gave him in 2000.
The primary here won’t resolve the Republican race, but it will narrow it, perhaps to just two candidates for the long haul. Pick two? Today, Huckabee and McCain. But check back on Sunday.
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Charles Bierbauer covered presidential campaigns for CNN from 1984 through 2000. He is dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, though the views here are his own and not those of the university. Bierbauer is senior contributing editor and a consultant to SCHotline.com.
