Arkansas Blog: Did Huckabee Jump the Shark?

When once-popular television shows reach a point of ridiculousness in story line from which they will never recover, they are said to have "jumped the shark" (a reference to Fonzie's waterski jump moment on Happy Days). Some observers, including ones Max links below, are suggesting that today's fairly interesting press conference when he decried negative ads then showed a negative ad is that moment for Mike Huckabee. One such observer is one my fellow travellers on my Iowa trip, Tom Schaller, writing in the American Prospect. I tend to disagree. While it was a fairly risky strategy, it may pay off for a few reasons. First, Huckabee's truest believers are likely to buy his critique and believe it to be sincere. This will give them energy to stay fired up for the caucuses and remind them of the nonconventionality and faith-based politics that has drawn them to Huckabee. In addition, we know from a lot of research that negative campaigning tends to reduce turnout. The Republican side in Iowa already has a turnout problem, only accentuated by the high energy and generally positive campaigns on the Democratic side. Huckabee knows that if the GOP caucus comes down to turnout created purely through organizational strength, Romney will win. Thus, turnout needs to be relatively high so Huckabee can take advantage of the generally positive views of him among Iowa voters. An all-out negative war probably only benefits Romney.

Comments

click on handle for the story

Sounds like he joined Brittany as the stereotypical southerner. Perhaps he should adopt her first hit as his theme?

I also wonder who hired Rove and/or his clones to do the Mormon Romney Christmas card in South Carolina? Could that have been the "jumping the shark" moment and not a pre-press conference attack of conscience?

Posted by: docholliday | December 31, 2007 06:33 PM

I tend to agree with Barth that it might be just a little premature to label this a meltdown moment.

First of all, it's Monday night...I would imagine the undecided voters are a pretty small group.

Secondly, if Huckabee is just trying to stay visible with very little TV budget....he has indeed dominated the news cycle again.

Also....don't lose sight of the fact that how the liberal, elite, parachuting in, national media types look at this is probably vastly different than how a conservative Iowa farm family looks at this.

I think the Iowa statewide newspaper is out with it's last poll later tonight.

The other thing about the final 48 hours is that the candidate has to close the deal with voters. Even if Huckabee had a bad day today...it doesn't appear from a distance that Romney is any closer to doing that than he has been.

It's gut check time.

Posted by: StrangeTimes | December 31, 2007 06:41 PM

Although I think Republicans will be rendered nearly irrelevant by Nov 8th.. I do think we should be merciless with scorn and ridicule, lots of ridicule..and never ever forget the dastardly evil they represent.

ATTACK!

Posted by: Eureka Springs, AR | December 31, 2007 07:24 PM

Forget Huckabee!! What's up with Hillary???

Posted by: Nanc | December 31, 2007 07:34 PM

Arkansas Blog

Did Huckabee Jump the Shark?

Comments

Post a comment