LITTLE ROCK — By the time you read this, former state Senator Jim Holt will likely have kicked off his campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. He is the one who ran against U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln in the 2004 election. Now that the voters have caught onto her, he wants a re-match.

What Holt did in 2004 was universally hailed as a near miracle at the time. He got about 44 percent of the vote against an incumbent senator who spent $4 million dollars when he only spent $100,000. As recently as last week, no less a Holt critic than John Brummett was still marveling at that outcome.

Holt is a populist grassroots Tea Party kind of Republican. The insiders who run the Republican Party at the highest levels don’t care for him. Some of them are now trying to spin that 2004 election as some kind of proof that Holt can’t attract enough votes to win.

That’s revisionism. As I said, most observers at thetime were amazed at how well he did.

The insiders who are working against Holt are mostly those Republicans who think that the key to winning “swing voters” is to go left. They are wrong. The typical swing voter does not have a fixed ideology - that is why they swing. A charismatic conservative who communicates clearly is just as likely to get their vote as a moderate or a liberal. Their vote is determined by feeling tone more than policy positions. Some of them are more conservative than the average northwest Arkansas Republican, and Holt has gotten more of them to vote for him than any Arkansas Republican alive.

I don’t just say that as my opinion, its mathematical fact. In the 2004 race, Holt got more people to vote for him than ever voted for Huckabee or Hutchinson. He currently holds the record for most votes received by a living Arkansas Republican. The charge that Holt is unable to attract independents and crossover voters is, with mathematical certitude, false. It is based on a misunderstanding of who most of these voters are and what drives them.

Some point out that Bush beat Kerry in Arkansas in 2004, so it is not saying much that Holt kept it pretty close against Lincoln.

This is pure spin. Kerry was a known Massachusetts liberal. If Holt had run against Kerry in Arkansas, he would have plastered Kerry, too.

Kerry wasn’t even trying in this state, while Lincoln outspent Holt 40-1.

By 2006 President Bush was unpopular. This hurt all Republicans running for state office in the 2006 cycle. Holt lost in a bid for lieutenant governor, butstill got more votes than the other Republicans on the state ballot, including Asa Hutchinson. Holt got more independents who did not vote for any other Republican to vote for him. He had more crossover appeal than any Republican on the ballot.

Holt is the best vote-getter that Arkansas Republicans have. However, for the best to be good enough to win, either his team needs to be stronger or that team needs to support him more.

That last goal would be easy, since at the state and national level he got essentially no support from the party in either 2004 or 2006.

I want to emphasize that this lack of backing was not true on the county level.

The county committees were almost all staunch supporters of Holt. After all, he won 149 of 150 counties in two state-wide primaries. The problem is in Little Rock and Washington, D.C., not amongst the grassroots.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 01/06/2010