A Classic Iowa Caucus Moment

Yesterday, we had a zinger for the ages out of the Huckabee campaign.

We also found out why the other guy from Hope is paying Ed Rollins the big bucks to run the show.

The narrative of the last week or so in the Hawkeye State has been that the Huckabee campaign may have already crested. A combination of the political media's perverse love of building a candidate up only to tear him down along with the effectiveness of a few negative/comparison ads out of the Romney campaign have coincided with a dip in the polls for him.

So yesterday, the Huck came out to the press corps and told them that he and his team had spent Sunday (when he was largely absent from the public eye) making an attack ad against Romney...because that's what conventional wisdom told him to do.

But his better angels took over and, at the last minute, he'd decided to pull the ad that he's already sent to some TV stations. So if it's shown, it's only because it might take them some time to get it out of rotation. Other than that, he's simply not going to show this attack ad because that's the wrong thing to do...except this one time. He shows the ad to the press here so they can understand what he's made but decided not to run with.

Obviously, the press is in on the game and laughs along with him because now he's gotten the ad up on the evening newscasts (for free) and it's probably not played with the mandated "I'm Mike Huckabee and I approve this message" at the end.

And I love how the Huck says that he's pulling the ad, lest the public become even more cynical than they already are.