After my weekend detour for local stuff, it’s time to return to the national scene. Last week I helped spread the word about the political action committee that named former GOP candidate Mitt Romney as its Honorary Chairman, and a couple days ago I found out Mike Huckabee was joining that fray as well. As the Huckster wrote:
I invite you to become a part of an exciting new venture. I remain enthusiastic and excited about what together, we can accomplish. Each of you, along with Huck PAC will be a big part of Election 2008. Please join HUCK PAC as we accomplish our goals, and help to bring the Republican Party back to its core values.
In the days and months ahead, I will send you frequent updates about the activities of Huck PAC and ways that each of you can be involved. I ask that you remember the principles upon which we founded Huck PAC: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We will continue to identify candidates who hold firm to those same strong principles.
What’s not clear yet is just who HuckPAC will support. They do have an interesting assortment of candidates who guest bloggers would like to “make the case for”, including Maryland’s Fifth District hopeful (and he needs a lot of hope going up against Steny Hoyer) Collins Bailey. I’m tempted to jump onto Mike’s blogroll simply to make the case for Andy Harris. I think a lot of those readers would enjoy what I have to say for the most part.
It seems to me that HuckPAC will attract many of those who still make up the Religious Right and definitely feel ignored by the higher-ups in the Republican Party; moreover, a lot of the true believers among the bloggers still hold out hope that Mike Huckabee will be John McCain’s pick for veep. It’s good that this large segment of the GOP still has some interest in the election even though their chosen aspirant didn’t make the final cut. And with a fairly left-wing Republican at the top of the ticket, a more conservative Congress who can work with McCain on a select few of his pet items (like cutting out earmarks) but do their utmost to stop the radical left portions of John’s (or Barack Obama’s) agenda would be in all of our best interests. We need a motivated base to work for at least that goal.
But my point in bringing up the Romney PAC was that Mitt Romney has the financial potential to combat the George Soros-types who make up a large part of the Left’s bankroll. One drawback to Huckabee’s PAC bid is that the Huckabee Presidential campaign pretty much ran on a shoestring from day 1, while fellow competitors like Romney or Rudy Giuliani had a larger financial base behind them. On the other hand, 100,000 contibutors giving $25 apiece is a nice $2.5 million and balances out 5 people who donate a half-million apiece. Certainly the small contributors can be more of a force at the ballot box IF they stick to the principles that compelled them to donate in the first place and vote accordingly.
It will be interesting to see as the months toward the 2008 election melt away how much of a force these new political action committees become on the results in November. With conventional wisdom predicting another GOP slaughter at the ballot box (then again, when has it not?) every little bit will help the cause.
Now if only Duncan Hunter would start up a PAC, I could be all over that one too.
Michael,
Huckabee’s PAC is the last thing we want to be getting behind as Republicans, particularly those of us who are strong fiscal conservatives, as I understand you to be. In case you haven’t heard, he recently avowed that libertarianism, and the economic conservatism it represents, are a much greater threat to the Republican party than liberalism. There’s an article about it here, http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13295
Under the Huckster’s vision the party would be shifted into everything those of us who hated him feared – a party that advocates big government to enforce socially conservative ends and Christian social justice (meaning the same sort of entitlement and wealth redistribution programs for those readers not familiar with the term).