Mike Huckabee's negative campaign

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I don't know how Huckabee thinks he can get away with saying he's running a positive campaign while in reality running a negative campaign, and a campaign that 2 days before the caucus, is now totally out of control. Iowa local media was rolled by his stunt on Monday, he totally fooled them for about 1 news cycle. Now they're catching up with the national pros, realizing they were played, and that Huck is a real dirty trickster.

I think Huck's negative campaigning and cheap tricks have something to do with his campaign manager, Ed Rollins, who I talked about a few weeks back. Looking at where Huckabee is now that Rollins is on board, I see my concerns were validated. Here's the facts:

• Huckabee's campaign is run by a guy who has pretty much always lost to Democrats
• Huckabee's campaign is run by a guy who helped Hillary Clinton win in 2006
• Huckabee lost his advantage in Iowa, he going negative, and wildly slinging mud.

That last bullet is exactly the strategy that Rollins tried when his candidate was losing the US Senate primary in New York. His candidate lost that primary, but the guy who won was so damaged by the way out-of-line personal attacks that it led to Hillary coasting to re-election.

Huckabee has no chance to beat Clinton in November, that's obvious. Now he's losing Iowa, and he's trying to take down Romney with him. I don't think he'll be successful, but there's no way Huckabee gets a pass on his lies about running a "positive" campaign. Unless he meant to say positively negative.

A friend send me this really smart observation about Rollins:

The appearance of Ed Rollins on a campaign is much like the arrival of vultures. It's a sign that the campaign will soon be dead but that there's still going to be meat to pick off the bones.

Essentially, Rollins just sees Huckabee as a way for him to make some consulting bucks. Rollins doesn't even care about the win he can't deliver, because he's collecting the massive consulting fees and thinks there will always be another sucker "media flavor of the month" for him to take advantage of down the road.