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Howie column ping

Mitt finds $20M can’t buy voters’ love
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, January 2, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com

Mitt Romney said last year that it would be “akin to a nightmare” to have to fund his presidential campaign out of his personal fortune.

But I can think of worse things. One would be spending $20 million of your money . . . and then losing. Forget “akin to” - that would be the politician’s ultimate nightmare.

So now Mitt Romney is about to find out how much it costs to buy - or fail to buy - an election in 2008. A lot more than the $6 million it cost him to buy the Massachusetts governorship in 2002, that’s for sure. Forget the $63 million Mitt raised through the first three quarters of 2007 (which included $17 million of his own).

Let’s talk about how much of his cash Mitt has thrown into the campaign by now. We won’t know until Jan. 31, but it’s got to be way more than $20 million.

And for what? Who knows at this point? By this time in most campaigns, the candidate has a pretty good idea if he’s going to win or lose. But this week the polls are all over the place.

And for at least another day he finds himself in a two-front war, with John McCain in the East and Mike Huckabee, the dope from Hope, in the West. Two-front wars are tough - just ask Napoleon and Hitler.

But what has to be worse for Mitt is the prospect of possibly losing in Iowa to a Gomer Pyle look-alike. It’s one thing to be running barely ahead of John McCain in New Hampshire - he’s a war hero, a political heavyweight, not to mention the amigo-in-amnesty of Ted Kennedy, who crushed Mitt in 1994. Plus McCain has all the local newspapers behind him.

But Mike Huckabee? This is a guy who used to be a radio DJ in the ’70s, and not in any major markets, either. Remember those cheesy polyester-garbed types spinning Top 40 platters on the 5,000-watt AM stations? They all signed off their shows with such doggerel as: This is Mike the Huckster, and just remember, as you go through life, whatever your goal, keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.

Huckabee’s problem, though, was that he did keep his eye on the doughnut. Soon he weighed 300 pounds. Most of those ’70s DJs migrated into the exciting field of previously owned automobile sales. But Huck set up shop in a tent. Can somebody shout amen?

This remains the base of Huckabee’s support, of course. Among those caucusgoers who have handled a poisonous snake as part of a religious service in the past 30 days, the Huckster has a 96-2 lead, and that last two goes to Fred Thompson, not Mitt.

McCain’s core voters are the people who speak Spanish, Huckabee’s are the people who speak in tongues.

How does Mitt explain to the partners at Bain Capital if he loses to Mike Huckabee? I mean, that would be like losing to Warren Tolman or John Lakian. Completely unacceptable.

No wonder Mitt has been spending money like a drunken sailor, although the difference between the sailor and Mitt is that Romney doesn’t have the bad-ice-cube excuse. Everyone has the occasional moment where suddenly you can’t control your spending - you’re trying to impress some babe, maybe, or you’re in a high-stakes poker game. Which I suppose is what Mitt’s in, although I think by this time he thought he’d be reacting to Hillary, not Huckabee.

Bhutto gets shot, and Huckabee apologizes to Pakistan, like the United States shot her or something. And what happened after Huck made a fool of himself? He went up two points in the national tracking polls.

I hope Mitt pulls it out in both states, but if he doesn’t, the reporters will be grilling him in a few weeks about why he blew 20 million in Steve Forbes-like futility.

To which Mitt should reply, “I was drunk.” So what if it’s not true? It’s an answer that always works for the Kennedys.
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