Huckabee and Expectations

As a Native American might say, Huckabee speaks with forked tongue. From an email from his campaign:

1. Expectations Management

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about “managing expectations” going into Iowa. I’m not sure about the other campaigns, but here at the Huckabee camp we expect to win—just as we expect to win the nomination and the general election. Apparantly, not everyone feels the same.

Jennifer Rubin from the American Spectator Blog quotes an interesting tidbit from the LA Times: "But in a sure sign of concern, the Romney camp has begun to raise the prospect of a second-place Iowa finish, insisting it would not hurt his chances in the contests that follow. 'It would be nice if Romney won,' said Doug Gross, an attorney overseeing Romney's Iowa campaign. 'If he finishes in the top two, he's fine.'"

Fine with second in Iowa? The Romney campaign dumped about $7 million into Iowa while we’ve spent, approximately, $327.00. Maybe they are satisfied with second but as fiscal conservatives we expect to get our money’s worth.

But later in the same email...

6. Tied for Second in NH

According to the latest Rasmussen Poll: "The new primary election poll shows a virtual three-way tie for second place between former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Senator John McCain at 15% and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee at 14%. For Giuliani and McCain, those figures are a very slight dip from earlier in the month while Huckabee has gained four more percentage points."

Please moderate your expectations accordingly.

Either the Huckabee campaign is being sarcastic at the end with the "Please moderate your expectations accordingly," or they're demonstrating a double-standard Hillary would be proud of. "Hah, hah, Romney is 'managing expectations,' now please excuse us while we do the same thing we just castigated him for doing."

Either way, I don't think that it will help the campaign much.