The New Republic

Why is TNR so slow to take Mike Huckabee seriously.  I know that they've put all their editorial eggs in the Mitt Romney basket, but does anyone believe that--with independents being drawn to Obama--that McCain has the juice to win the Republican nomination?  That social conservatives will fall behind him?  Honestly, with the Mormon Mitt Romney running against him, it's likely that McCain won't even win his home state.

If Huckabee can place third in New Hampshire and again first in South Carolina, the stranglehold of the Big Business elites in the Republican party will be demonstrably broken.  Huckabee has the same amount of likeability as Obama does--maybe more to the swing voters who may be risk-averse when they're alone in the voting booth.  I firmly believe that only Mike Huckabee has the ability to beat Barack Obama or any Democrat in the general elections.  

Any "race" between Obama and McCain will be over once they appear on the same dais.  

- kerouac9

January 4, 2008 at 11:18am

Kerouac:  Did you mean to post this on the NRO site?

- Androscoggin

January 4, 2008 at 11:34am

Kerouac9, I'm with you. Huckabee is the only Republican I'm scared of as a general-election opponent; any Democrat but Hillary would mop the floor with any other Republican nominee. Not only is Huckabee a near-Clintonian mass-media connecter, he's the only plausible post-Bush Republican nominee. He needs to be taken seriously as a candidate and, unpleasant though it might be, as a potential president. For example, would the Huckster stand any chance of getting his tax plan into his own party's platform? Does he really intend to try to implement the national sales tax, or is it more of a symbolic proposal meant to rally voters but, like George W. Bush's similarly symbolic* immigration and Social Security proposals in 2000, not meant to be acted upon anytime soon? Does Huckabee bring any coterie of his own advisors, or would he build his cabinet out of the wreckage of the current Washington GOP? Does anything from his record in Arkansas have predictive value for how he would work with a Democratic Congress in the first years of his term? And so forth.

*Or so conservatives seem to have assumed, given how shocked they seem to have been by Bush's "betrayals" of conservative values in the second term when he actually tried to do all the stuff he promised in 1999 and 2000 that he would do.

- rhubarbs

January 4, 2008 at 11:37am

"Huckabee is the only Republican I'm scared of as a general-election opponent"

Sorry buddy...ummm....call up any Democratic or GOP strategist and tell them this and they'll laugh for about 30 minutes. Huckabee is a joke. His sermons alone (when they come out) will crush him. But then, so will about 50 other things...one campaign hack last night told me the following:

"Huckabee 35, Obama 65"

Not out of the question...how does he even raise money? THe WSJ wing of the party won't touch him...

- virginiacentrist

January 4, 2008 at 11:54am

Andro--No, I'm a longtime reader here.  I clicked over to The Corner last night (for maybe the second time ever) and was surprised with how stupid it really is.  But maybe four months ago I saw Huckabee on The Colbert Report and was stunned that while I was watching him speak, I was thinking to myself, "You know, this guy would make a pretty good president."  I didn't know anything about his policies (which are crazy as stated but he was a liberal governor of Arkanas--so go figure), but his personality was magnetic.  He'd be the best television candidate the Republican party has ever had.  I came on here the next day and posted somewhere that Mike Huckabee scares the shit out of me.  He still does.  

I've just been really disappointed that TNR has been 24/7 Romney coverage and marginalized Huckabee and really drastically mis-interpreted the reason for his rise.  I mean, TNR has run some Paul articles that are relatively insubstantial (I'm guessing because Paul articles bring a ton of Web traffic to the site), but almost nothing on Huckabee.  

Now that Romney's on the ropes, TNR is going to look to McCain, who finished behind Thompson last night?  Seriously?  I live in Arizona; McCain represents me, but his time is long over.  

- kerouac9

January 4, 2008 at 11:59am

I'm with Rhubarbs exactly: Scared only of Huck and confident in Anyone But Hillary.

THe only comfort I can think of for those of us who fear Huckabee's Gomer Pyle act (believe me, he can win with "I'm White and Christian, just like you!") is that the moneyed interests have too much to lose with him in the White House. If he can mend fences with big business and, as Rhubarb suggests, quietly promise the bigwigs not to make good on his populist rhetoric, then he's going to be damn hard to beat.

- stgla

January 4, 2008 at 12:00pm

VA Centrist--would this be a similar campaign hack who would have told you that Huckabee would have fallen back to earth two months ago?  No one in the East Coast establishment believes that Huckabee can be competitive; that's a source of his strength, because I think that the Christian Conservatives are tired of having people like me point at W and say, "Do you really think it's Christian to cut taxes for the rich and kill 250,000 brown people?  What was it that Jesus said about camels and needles again?"

I agree that Huckabee's policies are ridiculous.  But Republican voters don't really care about policies.  They care about personalities and authenticity.  And as crazy as Huckabee is, he OOZES authenticity.  

Romney outspent Huckabee 15-to-1 in Iowa.  

- kerouac9

January 4, 2008 at 12:23pm

stgla:

All I can say is that 100% of the the DC campaign world (both democrats and republicans) disagrees with you for very substantial reasons. Sure, Huckabee is likable. But will he be likable when people hear how he wanted to quarantee wicked gays? On the surface, Pat Robertson smiles a bunch, but when you learn more about him, you want to jump through the TV and punch the guy. Huckabee is pretty much the Pat Robertson of this year's election...

But I hope more folks agree with you, because Huckabee would be the weakest GOP nominee since Goldwater....

- virginiacentrist

January 4, 2008 at 12:24pm

I'm with stgla and rhubarbs.  People can fall for a nutty person who has convictions.  (Reagan showed that.)  Romney is a much weaker candidate, all his money notwithstanding.  But I do think McCain's scary, too.

And Democratic and GOP strategists have been wrong lots of times, including last night.

- liebig

January 4, 2008 at 12:31pm

Who says Huckabee has convictions? I thought he was just a nice guy...

- virginiacentrist

January 4, 2008 at 1:13pm

OK Rhubarb, kerouc. I think I can see your points on Huckabee, they were made strongly.  He is likable and fun, although I think comparing his political abilities and charisma to Obama's is way off.  

I keep accidentally thinking that people vote on issues and stuff.

- Wandreycer1

January 4, 2008 at 1:32pm

Virginiacentrist, I'm still hoping that you'll direct the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia in 2009.

But when I hear you say that Democratic campaign uppity-ups are so confident that Huckabee is a joke, it makes me wonder, "Do you mean the strategists who knew they would win a landslide in 2000, or the ones who knew they'd already won a landslide in 2004?" Have they never seen the man? Listened to him speak? I've been predicting that he would make a formidable candidate since I first heard him in a radio interview about his diet in 2005. To date, my fears of his success have proven entirely justified, so you'll forgive me if I'm not quick to write him off as a joke because the same people who said George W. Bush was a joke in 1999 say it about Huckabee now.

If Huck wraps up the GOP nomination in the next six weeks, who is going to confront him with any foolish things he might have said in a sermon years ago? There won't be debates until late September or early October. Until then, the Huckster will engage with voters primarily through one-on-one TV interviews, and he is by far the best performer in that environment of any candidate in either party. He is very good at dealing with hostile questions in that settinig, and even the most hostile mainstream newsmedia questioning will be milquetoast at best.

And Republican strategists have been telling the nation for 30 years that values-motivated Christian voters are the key to lasting Republican political dominance, but now we're supposed to believe that letting values-motivated Christians actually have a candidate who believes in their agenda for real is a mortal threat to Republican viability?

Then again, I hope you're right, and my Huckabeean prescience extends no further  than Iowa!

- rhubarbs

January 4, 2008 at 1:36pm

Huckabee? Didn't I hear him call Gk Chesterton "GK Chesterson" among other errors in last nites speech?  Just wondering if he has ever read him.....or maybe I'm just old and deaf...

- lindamwil

January 4, 2008 at 1:49pm

"Do you mean the strategists who knew they would win a landslide in 2000, or the ones who knew they'd already won a landslide in 2004?"

-Cocky liberal activists thought that - campaign folks knew it would be tough. We thought we'd win, but we definitely weren't cocky.  I think everyone thought 2000 would be close since Al Gore was down big from the start...

"If Huck wraps up the GOP nomination in the next six weeks, who is going to confront him with any foolish things he might have said in a sermon years ago? There won't be debates until late September or early October."

-Clinton buried Dole in the spring of 96 with contrast ads. Obama or Hillary will have nearly unlimited money to spend. Huckabee will be broke.

"And Republican strategists have been telling the nation for 30 years that values-motivated Christian voters are the key to lasting Republican political dominance, but now we're supposed to believe that letting values-motivated Christians actually have a candidate who believes in their agenda for real is a mortal threat to Republican viability? "

Yeah. There is a huge chunk of the nation, including most swing voters and tons of country club republicans, who fear these folks...

Plus - the guy is not a great politician. Way overrated. Check out his foreign policy answers over the past few weeks. He's not even aware of where Afgahnistan is on a map. The media derided him last night, from what I could tell.

Finnally:

1. The released rapist murderer thing would destroy him by itself. It's devastating.

2. The fair tax proposal would destroy him by itself. It's devastingly. Democrats can run ads that LEGITIMATELY talk about a $10k tax increase for the middle class...proposed by a Republican...he'll either back away from it and look wacky or stick with it and look wacky... And since he'll be bleeding country club republicans, who will be scared by the "gays are wicked", "quarantine aids patients", "catholics are demons", etc. rhetoric...how will he win them back with a radical tax plan and a record of tax increases?

3. Sometimes when you say something over and over, it becomes the truth. The GOP establishment will spend the next two months calling Huckabee unelectable in an attempt to push someone else...this will create the impression amongst the media and the voters that Hucakbee is deeply flawed. It will send a signal to swing voters that Huckabee cannot win.

Personally - I don't think Huckabee has a chance in hell at getting the GOP nod. No Republican has ever stood up to the GOP DC elites and won....especially not a Republican who has Rush Limbaugh gunning for him EVERY DAY on his show. I mean, christ, the Democrats could run ads that say, "Even conservative Rush Limbaugh says Huckabee is an unprincipled loon." McCain, Rudy, and Romney all have better shots...at the nomination.

Apparently it's CW on this site to believe that Huckabee is electable. I'm going to fight back against that over the next couple of weeks.

PS: If I ran the Democratic race in '09 how would I be able to start a website called www.isGeorgeAllenGay.com?

- virginiacentrist

January 4, 2008 at 2:14pm

Maybe I only think of Huckabee as having convictions because I'm comparing him to Romney. :)

- liebig

January 4, 2008 at 2:25pm

VA -- if saying something over and over again makes it come true, why isn't Clinton inevitable anymore?  

- liebig

January 4, 2008 at 2:27pm

"If Huck wraps up the GOP nomination in the next six weeks, who is going to confront him with any foolish things he might have said in a sermon years ago? There won't be debates until late September or early October."

-Clinton buried Dole in the spring of 96 with contrast ads. Obama or Hillary will have nearly unlimited money to spend. Huckabee will be broke.

The press has already started the proctology exam on Huck for free.  The press won't have much else to do with him besides set him up for witty rejoinders and dig up his past in detail. It's not like he can banter non-absurd policy ideas around in interviews or pal around with photogenic insiders to fund raisers.  He's a sitting duck for every reporter from here to Timbuktu.

- Wandreycer1

January 4, 2008 at 2:27pm

I'm not surprised Huckabee took the win in Iowa.  It's not like he had to work very hard to win over his own flock - conservative, born-again Christians.  He'll be strong in states where that counts.

On the national stage, he's toast.  I don't care how witty he is, how much fun he appears to have playing bass or how many ads he runs featuring Chuck Norris, he's not going to win in a general election.  When you get past the friendly facade, the many is quite scary indeed.

- bcbaird

January 4, 2008 at 2:37pm

vacentrist, I am with rhubarbs on this one as well. If America can elect shrub twice we can elect anyone. I am not so sure America is not racist enough not to vote against Obama.  Or sexist for Hillary. Primaries are one thing, the general is something else. I hope and pray I am wrong. And you are wrong about the serial rapist thing, Huckabee released thousands of people, one was a mistake. Are we to out punish the Republicans? Also the guy had been castrated while waiting for trial due to a crude and savage attack, with his testicles flushed down the toilet. Finally, the previous Governor recommended the parole first.

The fair tax idea will only be labelled a proposal, a way to bring up a discussion on how to change the system not the final answer.

I do agree he will not get the nod, but he will be the VP candidate, probably under McCain. Republicans will not commit suicide to derail his campaign because they know they need him in the fall. They will line up behind McCain and lay off Huckabee.

- blackton

January 4, 2008 at 2:40pm

The press isn't going to convince the Religious Right or Republicans who are already predisposed to hate the press.  That would play right into Huckabee's hands, right?  If the press starts attacking Huck, he'll simply tell people, "I must be doing something right, if these guys don't like me."  

At the same time, I think we learned from the W. campaign that the press will take it easy on a dangerously unqualified candidate as long as he's likeable.  Huckabee snake-charmed Rolling Stone, for goodness sakes.  Yes, the Mother Joneses of the press will attack Huckabee, but it's going to be hard to beat him up by showing video of a 400 pound guy and trying to convince the audience that the 200 lbs. smooth talker in front of him are one in the same.  

Clinton was an incumbent with a churning economy underneath him when he beat Dole.  Huckabee is a likeable guy, and in one-on-one interviews, where he doesn't have to talk about substantive issues (when was the last SUBSTANTIVE ISSUE REVIEW of the candidates that's taken place on this site?  It's been a lot about "Is Romney too Mormon to be President?").  Seriously, if the press actually talked about issues, I wouldn't be worried about a Huckabee nomination.  But they don't, and that includes this site.  

People will believe their eyes before they believe 20 newspaper articles.  Huckabee doesn't look like a shifty, corrupt politician.  Romney does, especially when he's having to explain his changes if heart.  Dole couldn't bring out the social conservative vote.  That was the lesson that W. learned.  Huckabee can.  As for the Country Club Republicans: if Huckabee wins the nomination, who else are they going to vote for?  

- kerouac9

January 4, 2008 at 2:47pm

good post kerouac, you are on to something I have to admit (and Blackton is right too - I do wonder if America will elect a black man in the end, I hope I am wrong).  

As far as Huck making headway by bagging the MSM, he'll make some no doubt about it (btw - it seems like Rolling Stone always goes out of its way to be nice to Republicans) but all press inspection is not bogus and their influence is not without a dangerous amount of power, fair or not  (look at poor Al Gore).  

I also detect a seriously fed-up-with-ignorance-and-incompetence feeling in this country, across all political persuasions.  You don't have to sound like Linus Pauling as a reporter or as his opponent in a debate in order for a majority of people to be utterly turned off at the first whiff of Huck's anti-evolution nonsense.  You can even ignore it.  

Just bring up how important science is and will be in the coming years: global warming alone, let alone China and India cleaning our clock. And that's not even touching monetary policy and health care.  Huck can be made to look foolish very easily in ways that most Americans - even most of the evangelicals if they'll admit it - just cannot face anymore.  I think everyone is sick of feeling humiliated by idiot ideological hacks destroying everthing they touch with epic idiocy.

I think the mentality will be something like - Joe Sixpack can't be a screw up at work, can't spout nonsense about modern, dificult issues that doesn't cut it - why should a President be able to?

- Wandreycer1

January 4, 2008 at 3:05pm

Hey, I'm not going to vote for Huckabee.  But if he's the only other choice on the ballot, and someone has a moment's doubt about whether or not America is "ready" for a black president (which is a sentiment I've heard from STUDENTS, of all people), I think that many could.  And there are a lot of people who are just going to vote for a Republican.  And there are a lot of people who are just going to vote for someone like them.  

I guess the impression I get from Huckabee is that he's going to say that he doesn't believe in evolution, but that doesn't mean that you can't.  And it doesn't mean that Christians have a responsibility to take care of the planet that God granted them dominion over, etc., etc.  

I think the other thing is that in a General election, does that stuff about Huckabee as governor really hurt him?  That he tried to raise taxes for better schools?  I think that Huckabee represents a style of Christian conservatism that a lot of liberals can at least no vehemently oppose: one that's based on charity and compassion (the real kind, not the W kind) and forgiveness.  Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't know what Huck will do when the opposition shows a lot of video of that fat guy.  

VACentrist could very well be right.  Maybe Huckabee is too vulnerable on issues to be elected.  But I'm not confident that the press can be depended upon to report the issues instead of the personalities.  I'm not sure that Obama (especially) can be relied upon to make the general election about issues.  Democrats have been "winning" the issues battle (health care, Social Security, fiscal responsibility, privacy, etc., etc.) for 7 years now, and it hasn't really shown up at the ballot box.  

- kerouac9

January 4, 2008 at 3:15pm

McCain-Huckabee would seem to me to take each man's biggest general-election assets, strip them away, and then bundle the resulting husk of unelectability into one Mondale-shaped package. But perhaps that's just the Democratic partisan in me embracing hope. ;-)

As to the expectation that the media will put Huckabee through the wringer, I have to wonder whether we're watching the same newsmedia. Because the American TV reporters I see can sit in a room with George W. Bush and let obvious lies about trivial but easily checked matters go unchallenged. If a boob like George W. Bush can look your average American TV reporter straight in the face and just make stuff up without getting called on it, what chance is there really that Huckabee can't dance away from any milquetoast "some people worry ..." questions? Plus, the Huckster's modern big-church Christianity carries its own get-out-of-embarrassment-free card, which he's already used to some effect in the Republican race over the pardons. He can say he was wrong about this or that inflammatory sermon, and God has helped him grow his heart, and he's about love and blah blah blah, and on pardons he can point out that no less an authority than Jesus Christ believed in the reformative power of pardoning criminals. The narrative for Dukakis was that he was an egghead liberal who cared more for the "rights" of criminals than the safety law-abiding citizens. The narrative for Huckabee will be that he is a committed Christian who literally practices what he preaches about forgiveness and so forth, and he quite effectively counters with stories of deserving people he pardoned who turned their lives around and joined the army or the fire department or whatever.

The "Fair Tax" thing could be a killer in comparison ads, especially with Obama, who has the clearest tax-cut message of any Democrat. But remember, the race will become a one-on-one battle between nominees who won't speak directly to one another at exactly the time Americans are paying their income taxes (and many of them losing their mortgage-interest deductions to the AMT), and if that's not an optimal time to be selling shutter-the-IRS snake oil, I don't know when is.

I hope Huckabee, if nominated, would prove weaker than a bottle of O'Doul's in George W. Bush's fridge. It's just that I'm pretty sure any non-Hillary Democrat could whup any other Republican, while I'm not sure than the same can be done to Huckabee.

- rhubarbs

January 4, 2008 at 3:19pm

A lot of pundits last night mentioned how McCain and Huckabee really like and respect each other, wondering how they would confront each other if the Republican nomination comes down to them. Both men have kept negativity to a low in their campaigns, but based on what I heard from Huckabee's speech last night, that's about to change.

Did anyone else hear Huckabee say something to the effect of "we, the candidates, are not fighting our opponents in front of us, we're fighting for the people behind us."

Brilliant! He knows he has to confront McCain sooner or later, so he's providing the explanation/excuse for his upcoming attacks now. And when he does go on the offensive, and the pundits attack him for doing so, he can point back to this speech and say "Hey, I warned you."

Absolutely brilliant!!!

- ZACummings

January 4, 2008 at 3:23pm

kerouc and rhubard - you're right on Huck's strengths, he's a master at volleying tough questions that could make him vulnerable and you're also right on the maturity level of too much of the press (who just plain didn't like Gore, so anything Mr. Supposedly Charming Gsaid was fine, you could almost see the wheels turning in so many of the articles: don't want to be called names by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh now do we?  Better make lke Brody and equalize everything.

Dunno, these last seven years have deeply changed us all, haven't they?  I cannot fathom that sort of pass and mentality being given to ANYone by the press or the people.  Especially if Obama is the nominee.

- Wandreycer1

January 4, 2008 at 3:40pm

Huckabee doesn't matter if he's #2 on the ticket. If The Huckster is the GOP nominee, then I'd be willing to put down good money that Obama would carry nearly as many states as Reagan did vs Carter in 1980.

1) he's totally-- not a little, not midly, but COMPLETELY-- out of his depth on foreign policy. Fatal during an election in which the international environment is more complicated and more threatening to US interests than at any time since, well, 1980.

2) his populism that The Nation's journalists love so dearly is of the dopier variety-- not just "Fair Tax" idiocy but also the kind of cheap stinkbomb-flinging at "Wall Street" and "Corporations" that means nothing to working families struggling with _real_ issues. If and when The Huckster comes up with an intelligent solution to our health care mess, I'll reconsider-- actually, McCain probably will, he's dexterous and clever enough to do so-- but The Huckster's economics understanding is about as advanced as your average dumb cracker's. Not ready for prime time.

3) we haven't even begun to dig into the rich toxic waste that no doubt lurks within Rev. Huck's sermon file. Quarantining AIDS victims, womenfok submittin' to their men? That's not the half of it. Occam would argue there's at least one campaign-killing nuke to be found in that trove. Probably two or three.

I wonder if Huck wouldn't be such an unbelievably bad candidate in the general that he'd actually be _bad_ for our side, bad for the nation. If you want to improve your game, you want the best opponent you can find. If you want to persuade the nation to accept single-payor, for ex., then you have to convince people with strong arguments.

As opposed to spouting mush and letting a cracker clown opponent blow himself up.

- teplukhin2you

January 4, 2008 at 4:06pm

Frank, I too was amused (and a bit thrilled!) by the chants of "USA!"

Obama's a different Democrat.

- rozenson

January 5, 2008 at 1:37am

Obama and Huckabee have much in common - their appeal seems to be about personality and values rather than about commitments to specific policy positions.  I assume that some of Obama's supporters would disagree with me - they will be acquainted with his positions on a broad range of issues, to be sure - but as for the rest of us, all we hear over and over is the vague high-minded unifier theme, and vague rhetoric about change in general but never any specific change of substance.

I keep hearing how "monumentous" the Obama phenomena is, but those of us who remember Elvis, the Beatles, and a hundred other cases of irrational exuberance in American culture are having a hard time getting on board this bandwagon.

I don't dislike Obama -- but I'm not sold yet.

Neil

- purcellneil

January 5, 2008 at 4:19pm