Despite the disagreements I had with Team Romney earlier today, I talked with my Romney Guy on a wide variety of topics.

On Ron Paul’s fundraising: Sometimes people just love underdog causes, and now we’ve got a guy who is the rebel. It’s entirely possible that he’s going to have a bigger ad budget in New Hampshire than McCain. His chances of getting the nomination are as about as high as Lyndon LaRouche’s getting the Democratic nomination, but he’ll have a lot more money to make some noise. This was supposed to be the model of the Thompson campaign. There was supposed Grassroots uprising that would push everybody else He could have been this guy, without the zany stuff and antiwar positions.

On his man’s improved numbers in South Carolina: It’s the ads. Everywhere his ads go up on the air, his numbers improve.

It’s just like getting in your car. When you push the pedal, it goes. The Bob Jones III endorsement was important – it’s the validation that was an important thing. I don’t think anybody instantly decides that they’re going to vote for him because of any one endorsement; but the endorsements say, ‘it’s okay to be for him if you’re an upstate southern Baptist.’

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Anywhere he’s gone on the air, his numbers have gone up. He’s person the voters have the least perception of, and as soon as they address that, he’s on top or right in the mix. Rudy or McCain? I don’t know every dollar they spend will yield similar impact.

On Huckabee: He’s getting the cavity search that the rest of the field has gotten. The question is, how long can he sustain this without any advertising and without any real field operation? Can he sustain the buzz?

On the dynamics of the race: It’s just such a weird race. People are waiting for this outsized personality that just isn’t going to come. People were cheering Fred Thompson’s entrance into the race before they knew anything about him – now we learn he’s got his own definition of what it means to be pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. In Huckabee, you have a boomlet based entirely on personality – eventually people will say ‘oh, he’s economically liberal.’ Maybe this is a function of new media emerging as a force – people are falling in love quickly and falling out of love quickly.

On the Democrats: The most interesting thing that happened last week was that Hillary Clinton got herself into a jam and pulled her emergency rip cord, the victim card. She can’t play that card too many times… She gets to use that once in primary and once in general. It’s like the last quarter of a basketball game, and they’ve used up all of their time outs. They managed to shift the conversation from how badly she did to this other thing, but if she goes back to this again and again, a lot of voters will say, ‘stop whining.’

On my speculation that Barack Obama lacks the cohones to go negative on Hillary: [Obama campaign manager David] Axelrod has all the right parts. Obama may never want to have the words come out of his mouth, but he’ll be happy to let others make the attacks on his behalf. The Edwards ad hitting her for flip-flopping was very well done. There is absolutely so much there to work with, and it’s a good start. An ad like that is the perfect way to distribute lots of negative information. If Edwards had Obama’s money, it would be clear how this can go… If Obama hesitates on going negative, it means he’s decided ‘I’m going to pass on it,’ and try again in four to eight years. It’s probably too early to tell if he’s taking a pass on it this cycle, but we’re going to get to that point soon.