February 23, 2008 05:25 PM UTC

Dobson, Huckabee Plot Glorious Comeback

• 11 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Rocky Mountain News reports:

Mike Huckabee, the last remaining obstacle to Sen. John McCain’s ascendancy to Republican nominee for president, left Texas for a paid speaking engagement in Colorado on Friday and spent an hour with one of his biggest backers – James Dobson.

Huckabee, who has been friends with the Focus on the Family founder for 14 years, did not disclose the details of their conversation but did talk about his campaign, outside the nonprofit’s headquarters.

Dobson also didn’t discuss what they talked about.

It didn’t take Huckabee long to take a swipe at McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – all sitting senators vying for the presidency. It came when Huckabee was asked why he left the battleground states of Texas and Ohio for a paid speaking engagement for Leadership of the Rockies at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs on Friday evening.

The lecture circuit is Huckabee’s primary source of income since leaving the governorship of Arkansas in 2006, and this event was scheduled months ago, campaign officials said.

The Rocky continues, just in case you were wondering:

About 40 supporters holding signs stood on the corner of the street where Huckabee spoke, including one handmade sign that read “Mike Huck-a-rules.” The event was held off the Focus on the Family property but within view of its headquarters.

Gary Schneeberger, Focus on the Family spokesman, said that the nonprofit wanted to be “hyper-compliant,” so as to not violate its nonprofit tax status by hosting a political event. He said that Dobson has endorsed Huckabee as a private citizen, not as founder of the influential organization, which features a radio program on 3,400 stations in North America and reaches 220 million people daily.

Yeah, “private citizen” Dobson has got himself quite a megaphone, and of course “private citizen” Dobson’s endorsement was the only thing that kept Huckabee alive after Super Tuesday, but in every other way, no doubt. “Hyper-compliant.” Focus on the Family, if you haven’t heard, has a great deal of experience being “hyper-compliant” with election law.

And it’s true that Huckabee’s candidacy has every appearance for a fool’s errand, doing more harm than good at this point to the party whose nomination he’s seeking, but we hear that didn’t faze the LPR crowd at the Broadmoor last night one bit. Which is definitely good news for somebody.