Huckabee draws scrutiny -- but he will probably not be too hurt by it

Mike Huckabee is the real deal, and he is now being treated as such. In this morning's wave of early state polls, Huckabee has a commanding lead in Iowa and a smaller one in South Carolina. A remarkable momentum cycle has been playing in Huckabee's favor here: The more he rises, the more the media will be amazed at his surge, the more he will be covered, and the more Republican voters will pay attention to him.

Newsweek is now putting Huckabee on its cover-page, while the Des Moines Register went full-page today to explain how home-schoolers and evangelicals are 100% committed to Huckabee's candidacy in Iowa.


Yet, Huckabee peaked early enough for the press and his opponents to have ample time to scrutinize him. And here is where the next three weeks will be very difficult for Huckabee: Giuliani, Romney, McCain and Thompson have been analyzed for months now. Most stories that can come out about them have already been published, re-published, discussed on all talk shows and by all pundits. But the dirt on Huckabee is still new: His opponents have not really attacked him yet, and the press has not printed that many story about a candidate that was still in low single-digits three weeks ago.

So most of the spotlight will be on Huckabee in the next three weeks, and he will have to sustain a drubbing of negative stories. And this is not unfair or evidence of bias: What was unfair was the way in which John Kerry surged in 2004 at the last minute without ever facing the kind of scrutiny Howard Dean or Wesley Clark got.

Already Huckabee has faced some major controversies in the past week. The first, of course, was his role in the pardon of convicted rapist William Dumond while governor of Arkansas, an issue reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad of 1988 which sank Dukakis's candidacy. This could potentially hurt Huckabee a great deal if his opponents seize on it, but they have been reluctant to do so for now.

The second controversy in the past few days has been over Huckabee's past positions on homosexuality. He wrote in a 1992 AP candidate questionnaire that, "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk." Now that will not particularly hurt him in a Republican primary; quite the contrary, many GOPers might feel this is a welcome contrast to Rudy's and Romney's more tolerant approach (though Rudy did some major backtracking when asked about gays, calling homosexual acts "sinful" this morning on Meet the Press).

But Huckabee's professed desire to see AIDS patients quarantined could be more problematic. An extremist position that made no sense given what was already known in 1992 about AIDS, this could potentially destabilize Huckabee a little. Not that Iowa caucus-goers will mind, but Huckabee still does not want the press to concentrate on such reports in the following days -- and it is likely that there is a lot where this is coming from given that the focus on Huckabee has just started.

Yet, Huckabee has something none of the other candidates are: He inspires Republican voters who despised all their other candidates. Fred Thompson was supposed to be the conservative savior, and Huckabee has emerged as that role. Insofar as there is a ton of negative stories about both Romney and Giuliani, and insofar as McCain is an unexpected option to many conservatives, why should Republicans not go for Huckabee even if he has dark spots on his record as well? Huckabee's sudden surge is due much more to the fact that none of his opponents inspired any passion during 11 months of campaigning than to anything he did himself; and this will make it that much more difficult for his opponents to fight back in the next three weeks.