Happy to Be a Target of GOP Rivals, Candidate Takes More Aggressive Tone
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 11, 2007
VINTON, Iowa -- If Mike Huckabee is right, the millions of dollars that his rivals for the White House have poured into their campaigns have been wasted.
Buoyed by polls that show him in second place among Republicans in this state, the former Arkansas governor has turned aggressive on the stump, picking fights last week with his competitors and promising to hit the airwaves with the $1 million he raised online last month, after raising just over $2 million in the first nine months of the year. He has moved almost his entire Little Rock operation to Des Moines and is preparing to hire more staff here soon.
The onetime Baptist preacher is betting that his mix of down-home Southern charm, social conservatism and economic populism will deliver a surprise on Jan. 3, when Iowa's voters cast the first ballots of 2008. He is encouraged by a sense that he has finally become a threat -- and a target.
Last week, former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee called Huckabee pro-life "but liberal on everything else." Iowa front-runner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, recently accused him of supporting "special tuition breaks" for the children of illegal immigrants. And critics of his Arkansas tax policies released a Web video renewing their claims that he is a "serial tax hiker" and a liar about his record.
In response to the attacks, Huckabee flashes the toothy grin that helped him twice win the governorship of a state not all that different from Iowa. While admitting that he raised some taxes, Huckabee says he lowered 94 others and raised the gas tax for roads only after a public referendum showed strong support for the idea. He said Thompson's claims that he was "one of the highest-taxing governors that we had in this country" are "on their face just not true."
And he defends an unsuccessful proposal in Arkansas to offer college scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants, saying it is unfair to punish children for things their parents did.
"Suddenly, I seem to be in the cross hairs of every predator who is out there," Huckabee said. "As a hunter, I know that a good hunter never aims his gun at a dead carcass. You only point it at something you want to put on the wall as a trophy."
Traveling through eastern Iowa last week, Huckabee showed off his newly aggressive style in attacking his rivals on abortion and same-sex marriage, two areas in which he has a more conservative record than many of his GOP primary opponents.
"You can't say, 'I'm pro-life philosophically,' then say it's up to the states," Huckabee said in Cedar Rapids. Huckabee supports national bans on abortion and same-sex marriage, issues that Thompson has suggested should not be handled at the federal level.
At a pizza parlor in Waterloo, he said, "I didn't become pro-life after I got into politics," tweaking Romney's recent conversion on abortion rights.
And after television evangelist Pat Robertson announced that he will back former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Huckabee touted his own backing by conservative activist Donald Wildmon, who has crusaded against sex and violence on TV.
Huckabee's strategy now, with only two months until the caucuses, is simple: campaign back and forth across Iowa and hope that a wave of attention from a victory here carries him to wins in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
"There will be a total upheaval of the process" if he wins Iowa, he predicted. "Momentum is unstoppable in an election process. If people suddenly say, 'This guy's got the mo. He's going somewhere,' no matter what the polls were the week before, all bets are off once these contests start."
The challenge for Huckabee is to find a way to communicate what he believes without much money or a vast network of political operatives such as Romney and others have built. Yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa's leading Republican, said in an interview that he thinks Huckabee is "the guy who could surprise everybody" in January. "It's demeanor, background, personal beliefs, friendliness, stuff like that," Grassley said. "How he conducts himself, things of that nature. I'm talking about who fits in with the average Iowan, who are they going to feel comfortable with."
But asked then why he would not endorse Huckabee, Grassley said it is because he is not yet a national contender. "If he had $10 million to spend on television, to reinforce what he tells you personally, then I think it would make a difference," Grassley said.
To describe Huckabee's campaign as a "lean, frugal operation," as he did recently, would be generous. In Iowa, he has run no ads on television and has sent just a few pieces of mail to voters, though he promises to do more soon. He has 10 Iowa staffers, compared with more than 60 in Romney's operation.
As he campaigned through Iowa, his 25-year-old daughter, Sarah, who moved from campaign headquarters in Little Rock to Iowa late last month to help her dad, essentially served as his scheduler, press secretary and top adviser.
A conservative on most issues -- such as the war in Iraq, where he says U.S. troops should stay until "we win" -- Huckabee is chatty and conversational, without Giuliani's fiery anti-liberal rhetoric or Romney's peppy optimism. Instead, he alternates between homespun, irreverent and plain goofy.
In interviews, he often cites his endorsement from action-movie hero Chuck Norris as a key moment in his campaign. "I think people are afraid now not to support me," Huckabee jokes. "We're going to send him to their house, and he'll knock on their door."
Dave Vermedahl, a Republican who attended a Huckabee event here but is undecided, said of the candidate, "I like his ability to laugh."
But Huckabee is dead serious when it comes to the issues he cares about. Describing himself as "a generation away from dirt floors and outdoor toilets," he at times sounds more like Democratic candidate John Edwards than someone who wants the Republican nomination.
"If you're rich, it's great," Huckabee said of the economy. But, he said, "there's a growing divide. . . . when you see the middle class shrinking, it's a terrible sign. People who have college degrees are not gaining ground economically."
He bashes the IRS frequently, backing a controversial idea called the fair tax, which would replace all current taxes with a 23 percent sales tax on all goods. Huckabee says it would make the tax code simpler, but it would take away breaks many Americans like. And he talks about the need for energy independence, so the United States can "tell the Saudis we need their oil about as much as their sand."
Unlike Giuliani and Romney, he rarely invokes the name that has become a Republican obsession: Hillary Rodham Clinton. In Vinton, he said he has a "civil relationship, a cordial thing" with the Clintons, who left Arkansas before Huckabee became governor. He instead brags about his record of beating Clinton allies in one of the few states in the South that remains heavily Democratic and has two Democratic senators.
Sarah Huckabee says the campaign is reaching out to home-school groups and churches to look for supporters. The fliers at the candidate's events describe him as "a family man with authentic conservative values." Supporters approach him after campaign events and say "I'm praying for you" or "God bless you."
Asked by reporters about his faith recently, Huckabee said: "Your whole life is not built around what you see but what you can believe. That's really what faith is."
Staff writer Shailagh Murray contributed to this report from Des Moines.
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