Columnist Was an Early Predictor of Huckabee's Success

By: E&P Staff Back in the summer, few pundits thought Mike Huckabee had any chance to win the Republican side of the Iowa caucuses. Creators Syndicate columnist David Sirota was an exception.

Sirota wrote an Aug. 14 article for The Huffington Post that had the headline "Dems Beware: An Economic Populist Is Rising In the GOP Presidential Primary."

In the piece, Sirota said Huckabee "has an extraordinarily different message than any of the other Republican presidential contenders -- a populist economic message that may be shunned by conservative operatives and K Street lobbyists ... but likely has an appeal among rank-and-file working-class Republican voters."

In an e-mail last night, Sirota recalled: "When I wrote this article, I was laughed at by many reporters, pundits, and readers."

Sirota did note in the August article: "I think a lot of Huckabee's [economic populism] rhetoric is just that: Rhetoric."