Gov. Huckabee's Strange News Conference

by Mark Rhoads

On Dec. 31 former Gov. Mike Huckabee held a news conference in Des Moines that was supposed to announce the purchase of time for a negative ad aimed at former Gov. Mitt Romney.  Gov. Huckabee said he had to respond to negative attacks on him by the Romney campaign and he also said he wanted to respond to attacks on his "good friend" Sen. John McCain.  This would be a good tactic for someone looking for second ballot votes from McCain supporters.  But Gov. Huckabee told reporters that he turned around 180 degrees one hour before the news conference and deciced to pull his own attack ad  because he decided it was too negative.  But then Gov. Huckabee proceeded to show the negative ad to reporters because he said he wanted to prove that the ad existed and was not a myth. 

If you really want to pull a negative ad you just don't show it, that's all.  It was somewhat transparent to anyone who watched the news conference that Gov. Huckabee wanted to congratulate himself for taking the high road while simultaneously doing what he could to get stories written about the contents of the negative ad aimed at Romney.  Gov. Huckabee just wound up looking silly in the process.  Referring to Gov. Romney, Gov. Huckabee said early on Monday that “If a man’s dishonest to obtain a job, he’ll be dishonest on the job.”  Ironically the same line appears in the pulled negative ad that Gov. Huckabee was apparently not really all that anxious to suppress after all.