For a Few Dollars More

Mike Huckabee lost South Carolina by just three points. Even after drawing down his presence Florida for lack of funds, he's consistently polling at around 15 percent of the vote, down from a high of 25 percent or so, in a contest where 25-30 percent of the vote will probably be enough to win the whole thing. As Larison notes, even with the press writing him off post-South Carolina (and never taking him all that seriously beforehand), he's easily leading in Georgia, and the February 5th landscape includes Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas as well, all of which seem like natural Huckabee territory. He's not going to win the nomination, but looking at how the race has turned out I don't think it's all that implausible to suggest that for all his weaknesses - his identity-politics problem, his unseriousness about policy, the hatred he inspires among movement conservatives, and everything else besides - if he had found a way to raise just a little more money, for organization and polling and ads in Michigan and South Carolina and Florida and then Super Tuesday beyond, he might have had a real chance to win this thing.

Photo by Flickr user Yaquina used under a Creative Commons license.