Brendan Nyhan

Huckabee vs. reality on electability

Like Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee is now selling electability in a general election campaign against Hillary Clinton — this was just the top Google ad in my sidebar:

Who Can Defeat Hillary?
Governor Mike Huckabee. Conservatives Find Their Candidate.
www.mikehuckabee.com

But as I noted earlier, the Huckabee backlash is just getting rolling. He may win Iowa, but his campaign will collapse soon afterward. The most important factor is that Huckabee is severely underfunded and has few elite allies in his party. As a result, the flow of negative information about him will be relentless as other Republican candidates, economic conservatives, and liberals pound him in the press and journalists dig up more dirt. The Democratic operative who told Drudge that Huckabee has a “glass jaw” in the general election is probably right, but he won’t get a chance to help break it.