End of the Trail: Brownback. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

And then there were nine. On Friday, Sam Brownback will drop his bid for the GOP presidential nomination. The Kansas senator, while popular with the conservative base of the party, never seemed to catch fire in the polls. Yet that’s not the reason he’s quitting. A source close to Brownback, who declined to speak on the record because the senator has yet to announce his intentions publicly, says the decision is purely about the money--that is, his lack of it. Brownback raised just $4.2 million during the first nine months of the campaign and blew through most of it, ending the third-quarter with just under $95,000 in the bank. (Interestingly, that’s about how much John McCain has to spend in the primary, when you figure in his campaign’s debts.)

Where did the money go? Well, for one thing, Brownback bet the farm on Iowa. According to his latest campaign reports, he spent at least $300,000 on the Ames Straw Poll--not including the potentially thousands of dollars more the senator spent on “get out the vote” efforts related to the event that were not clearly identified among his expenditures. According to his Federal Election Commission filing, Brownback spent $128,900 on straw poll tickets alone--which, at $35 a pop means he bought more than 3600 tickets. Yet Brownback got just 2,192 votes that day, coming in third, so that means he likely paid for someone to vote for another candidate. Bummer. He spent nearly $20,000 on buses to bring his would-be supporters to Ames.

It's not easy being on a diet when you're at the Iowa State Fair. Just ask Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor dropped more than 200 pounds before he jumped in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. On Friday, he gave a speech at the fair in a last-minute attempt to woo voters on the eve of the Ames Straw Poll. Going to the Iowa fair is considered a right of passage for anyone with White House ambitions. Ditto for testing out the food, which includes everything from funnel cakes to deep fried pickles. How can Huckabee, now a healthy heart evangelist, resist all the transfat temptations? Huckabee admits it's tough going, but says he plans to follow a basic rule. "If it wasn't a food 100 years ago, it's not a food today," he told your Gaggler. In other words, corn dogs are out. "We'll let you have that," he said. (Thanks, but we've already had two.) All around us, the air was thick with the soul satisfying aroma of artery hardening treats. But Huckabee, like any wartime Commander in Chief In Waiting, stayed the course. "I saw the Fried Twinkie booth over there. he said with firm resolve. "You aren't going to see me in that line." He also vetoed some of the fair's more exotic offerings, including the potato lollypop--"Potato what?" he said, and waved it away.

Huckabee's fortitude is, on the one hand, admirable. But for voters in Iowa, it may also hint at a troubling, Bush-like stubborn streak--a refusal to admit when he's wrong and make course corrections when the facts on the ground demand them. Case in point: Huckabee, who proclaims himself a patriot, outright refused even a single forkful of the fair's proudest culinary achievement: the sublime Hot Beef Sundae. This siren song of mashed potatoes smothered with chipped beef, cheese and gravy is so deeply, Americanly delicious that just one bite is enough to make all who taste it place their hands on their hearts and spontaneously recite the National Anthem. Yet Huckabee was unmoved by its obvious appeal. "You've got to be kidding me," he said incredulously when your Gaggler tried to tempt him. "My gosh. Even in my fattest days, that doesn't appeal to me." So sad. But then, perhaps sensing that Republican straw poll voters might think twice about the bona fides of a candidate who goes to a fair and orders salad, Huckabee went off in search of manly fare that wouldn't betray his principals. "I'm looking for meat," he said. "A pork chop. That's something good and decent."