I'm Running A Positive Campaign... Please Run My Negative Campaign

This is one of the more bizarre turns of events I've ever heard of. So Mike Huckabee schedules a press conference designed to unveil an attack ad against Mitt Romney. The ubiquitous banner behind him says "Enough Is Enough" and includes all kinds of statements from the ad. Then Huckabee comes out and says "we're not running a negative campaign" and announces he's pulled the ads from the media. But then he goes ahead and shows the ad to the press anyway!

“We prepared it, sent it to the stations, supposed to start running at noon today. This morning, I ordered my staff to pull the ad; I told them I do not want it to be run. If it was run at all, it would be until the stations pulled it off their schedules. And we are now committed, from now through the rest of the caucuses, that we will run only the ads that talk about why I should be president, and not why Mitt Romney should not. I know that some of are up saying, well did you really have an ad? Well, I’m going to show you the ad. You’ll get the chance to find out.”

Then his staff HANDS OUT COPIES of the ad to the media, in the hopes that they'll run them for free on their shows, I guess.

Maybe Huckabee is so cash-strapped that he realized he couldn't run these ads, but tried to spin it into a principled positive, while also hoping that the press would do his dirty work for him. I don't know if it worked. Here's video of the grilling Huckabee took in the press conference.



I know that the Republicans were slinging all kinds of mud at one another, including this fake holiday greeting card that looks like it's from Mitt Romney with Mormon passages all over it, but... wow. Talk about dealing from both sides of the deck. Huckabee's really not experienced at the way these attacks are supposed to work, is he? You're supposed to find a surrogate, not BE the surrogate handing out the ads to the media! It kind of ruins the whole "plausible deniability" thing when you're doing the denying yourself.