December 04, 2007
WH '08: Romney Takes Robocalls To Iowa AG
Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has asked the Iowa attorney general's office to investigate the funding source behind a group calling itself TrustHuckabee.com.
That group is actually a front for a Delaware-based PAC called Common Sense Issues. All the leading GOP campaigns, including Mike Huckabee's, deny engaging in push-polling tactics.
In a letter [PDF] to Attorney General Tom Miller, Romney's campaign counsel accuses the apparently pro-Huckabee group of placing robocalls to Iowans without properly identifying itself. New Hampshire's AG is already investigating robocalls that highlight Romney's Mormon faith.
The Romney camp's decision to fight back in Iowa, where his once-solid polling lead is close to being crushed by Huckabee, comes just days before he is due to give a major speech on his faith. The decision to deliver the address appears to have been an agonized one within his campaign. Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former governor of Arkansas, has surged in polling and media coverage in the last month. Unhappy white evangelicals are being credited with Huckabee's sudden viability.
Iowa evangelicals who are skeptical of the Mormon faith have reason enough to go after Romney without the cooperation of Huckabee's people. But there is no way Huckabee's camp does not know that he needs the evangelical vote to knock out his immediate rivals, none of whom gets A's in that bloc. An ad Huckabee is running in Iowa features the phrase "Christian Leader" very prominently, indicating he is purposely making a contrast between his faith and Romney's.
Also featured prominently in that ad are snippets from Huckabee's address at the Values Voters Summit in October, widely seen as a turning point in his long-shot bid for the nomination. The general sense then was that while the evangelicals in attendance did not consider Romney a fellow Christian, his simpatico positions on cultural issues made him acceptable given the choices in that field. But Romney's lead was always tenuous, and six weeks later a poll of Iowa voters shows him and Huckabee in a dead heat.
Romney, who is weak in national matchups, has bet his campaign on the bounce that wins in Iowa and New Hampshire would give him. Now that he's fighting for his life in those states after spending the most of anyone else in the GOP by far, we can expect to see a real brawl in the weeks ahead.
The MSM's infatuation with Huckabee appears to be over. The suspicion that he is trying to capitalize on religious prejudice won him a spanking in Richard Cohen's column today, and his newfound celebrity is forcing a closer look at his record. As for the theological debate that might be about to break open, this is the sort of thing circulating among evangelicals. To put what Romney's up against into perspective, that film was shown to this Gater in Sunday school years ago in the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia -- hardly ground zero for our-way-or-
the-highway evangelicals.
[UPDATE 12/5 2:10] NJdotcommer Jessica Taylor says she was shown a similarly anti-Mormon film in her Southern Baptist Sunday school in Elizabethton, Tenn.
Graphic: Reuben Dalke
Posted at 5:39 PM
Posted to:
Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Republicans, WH 2008
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