With all due respect. I have suspicion that Iowa voters, or Florida voters, don’t listen much to Hugh, Rush, and don’t read NRO for sure. Somehow Huckabee made himself separate from the bottom group and became a major candidate. Fred did not. (just to make sure where I stand: Hunter-then Fred-Romney-Rudy-Mac-Huck). Huckabee gets no traction now, but if Fred did the same, he would have. I like NRO, Hugh, Rush, Prager, Bennet and many others, but am not going to jump if they say so. I suspect Iowa and Florida would even less. I think you overestimate their influence.
Of course I wouldn’t vote for someone just because a talking head told me to. But Fred’s problem was exposure.
Huckabee broke out of the pack because the MSM suddenly started to publicize him. For a while there, they were pushing him hard. The NY Times Magazine section put him on their cover! Then he started doing so well they all got scared of him, and turned against him for fear he might actually become president.
Thompson, on the other hand, never got any exposure. He had far more energy than McCain, but you rarely heard anything about him. Most people hardly knew he was running.
If the conservative and alternative media had given him some exposure, that might have been enough to bring him to Joe Sixpack’s attention. But it never happened. As you say, unlike Huckabee he woudn’t have faded. But he never got the chance to show himself to people.
A fair number of deluded people still think of McCain as a conservative. I think Rush and others will educate them, but maybe too late. And besides, where’s the conservative alternative, they wonder?