Arkansas Blog

Nice coincidence. I mentioned again here yesterday that Mike Huckabee enjoys less than enthusiastic, unified support from Arkansas Republicans. Several of them couldn't wait yesterday to send along a link to the fact that Ron Paul had outraised him in the recent quarter -- by a huge margin.

Today, the Democrat-Gazette's Daniel Nasaw explores the issue in some depth, recounting the long split between Huckabee and many legislative Republicans. The Shiites, as Huckabee himself has branded them, never liked his willingness to raise taxes, no matter how worthy the cause, and his compassionate streak when it came to immigrants (two areas where we found agreement with Huckabee). Copy and paste to read Nasaw's story:

http://nwanews.com/adg/National/203279

But the split is deeper than fiscal policy. A failure to deliver on promises large and small to former supporters soured many of them. (Jackson Stephens' ire at Huckabee's renege on a promise to stay out of a food tax repeal campaign is the most famous.) You need look no farther than, for example, the state ABC Board to see a former Huckabee campaign finance manager, Ron Fuller, who's turned into a full-blown Beebe-ite.

And as I've said before, stories we've broken on any number of topics about Huckabee have come invariably from people once counted as Huckabee insiders. The feeling, strongly held in these quarters, is that the former governor has always been more about receiving than giving.

It was interesting, for example, to read in the D-G about his fund-raising effort in Texarkana and his supposed solid support base in the Beech Street Baptist Church, which he once pastored. I've no doubt he has friends there. But it's not unanimous (which Democratic legislator Steve Harrelson, who was quoted warmly in the D-G story, surely knows). Huckabee used one of his books to angrily chastise members of the church for refusing to provide him with health insurance when he broke his commitment to preach to seek public office. Hard feelings lingered on both sides at the time. Huckabee is not exactly known as the forgive-and-forget type.

In the final analysis, Huckabee's failure in nine months to raise in Arkansas an amount equivalent to what Bill Clinton raised at the outset of his entry into the presidential race (when the dollar was worth more and campaign contribution limits were lower) is a telling read on the depth of affection Huckabee left here. Instructive, too, are the polls that show Hillary a likely winner over Huckabee in Arkansas.