Huckabee Gives Thanks for Rising Support

A very successful Thanksgiving week for Huckabee, he had the support of 22% of people polled in Iowa gaining on Mitt Romney’s 27% in a CBS/New York Times poll that acknowledged its 5% room for error. Interestingly, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll, Huckabee now has substantial support from those extremely opposed to abortion, the Christian right and other conservatives placing he and Romney in a tie for potential voters in Iowa. The discrepancy between the numbers falls within the sampling error, fueling curiosities as to which poll is more accurate—a question that until Iowa’s Election Day on January 3, 2008.
Huckabee may have intercepted Fred Thompson’s run for the Republican Nomination on a platform as the true conservative who has not spent too much in Washington begging corruption or scandals. Managers from Thompson’s campaign lament that Huckabee’s success in Iowa will really damage Thompson's chance of receiving the nomination; despite Thompson's concrete attacks on Huckabee’s numerous encounters with the Arkansas Ethics Committee during his time as governor. The biggest of these scandals brought into light by Thompson include: how the Presidential Candidate denied that furniture—valued at $70,000—in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion was donated. Additionally, Thompson claimed that in the early 1990’s the Past Governor used campaign donations as supplement for his personal salary. It seems that as Huckabee accumulates more support, the other candidates have begun to recognize him as a formidable threat and worthy of attacks on his high taxing as Governor and anything else the other candidates can find.On Saturday, Huckabee visited South Carolina—one of the early primary states— to attend a Clemenson v. Football game and was joined by Ric Flair as well as South Carolina’s former Governor Beasley. Before the kick-off, Huckabee met with other spectators making a brief statement about certain policies and answering questions from the crowd and asserted that the “next terror attack on the U.S. will be postmarked Pakistan but said he believes that nation will continue to cooperate with American anti-terrorism efforts”. In another campaign event in Columbia, South Carolina, Huckabee solidified his opinion that he would take arms against Pakistan if a credible threat to the U.S. emerged; reinforcing that the security of Americans is his number one priority. He then spent Sunday morning at a community church in Irmo, South Carolina asserting, “I am not here today in a political capacity” continuing this week’s focus on authenticity and how “I’m not just saying something that a focus group gave me or a room full of consultants handed me in the form of a script and said, ‘Hey, if you want to be president, go out and say this stuff.” Huckabee had another strong week of campaigning especially in South Carolina and continues to rise in the opinion polls in Iowa.