Is Rob Hubler missing the Democratic wave?

In the 2002 coming-of-age surfing movie “Blue Crush,” our heroine seems to be on the verge of having it all: the endorsements, the affections of a star quarterback and adulation of the crowds on the beach at a competition.

But Kate Bosworth, for much of final part of the movie, waits in the calm spots of the Pacific Ocean, watching others pipe through walls of water off the Hawaiian coast.

She just can’t catch a wave.

And that may just be the epitaph on the tombstone of Iowa’s 5th District Democratic congressional challenger Rob Hubler’s 2008 campaign.

Hubler is without question the underdog in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King.

Rob Hubler

First, there are the numbers.

There are 143,802 registered Republicans in the district, compared with 99,641 Democrats and 126,145 people registered with no party.

King, the incumbent, enjoys cult-hero status with the formidable Christian right in western Iowa. (Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter even calls King “one of her favorites.”)

And, perhaps most important, there is the money.

King has built a war chest, while Hubler has collected what amounts to a financial slingshot. Open Secrets.org reports that King has raised nearly $900,000 while Hubler has pulled in about $220,000. Late last week, Hubler told me he had about $40,000 in cash on hand to spend in these remaining days.

Months ago, there seemed to be more potential for Hubler to raise money over the Internet, using King’s famously controversial remarks to stoke up dollars from the many people King has offended in his three terms in Congress.

Hubler had dozens of outrageous comments from King to leverage for dough.

So why hasn’t Hubler been able to do with King’s slew of remarks what Democrats in Minnesota have done with one comment from Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who told Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the media should investigate “the views of the people in Congress [to] find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

That McCarthyeseque language ignited a flood of contributions from across the nation: more than $1 million in just days for her lesser-known opponent, Democrat Elwyn Tinklenberg.

King himself called Sen. Joseph McCarthy a “hero for America” only a few years ago.

“We have not capitalized on that,” Hubler said. “But I’ve never been on MSNBC.”

Hubler understands what getting King’s comments into the fund-raising mix could have done for the western Iowa race. “We have worked everything we can think of to conceivably do that,” he said.

Hubler — who is insistent that he will still win in a stunning surprise — said some of the failure (so far) to capitalize on King’s stream of provocations is his own fault for failing to find an effective Internet strategy, even with the one of the pioneers of Web politics, Joe Trippi, on board with his campaign as a consultant.

“Obviously we’ve got to take some of the blame for that,” Hubler said.

But much his troubles lie beyond his control, as the sprawling rural 32-county 5th District has no dominant, district-wide television.  And even in the Internet age, TV is still the mother’s milk of politics — as evidenced by the Bachmann-MSNBC episode.

“That’s exactly right,” Hubler said. “I 100 percent agree.”

Less than a week from Election Day, Hubler’s chances for an October surprise like the one that hit Bachmann have dwindled.

The last remaining question is, with time running out, can he make like Kate Bosworth and catch one of the waves that appear to be hurtling with fury toward once-tranquil Republican shores?