"Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee’s victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong.
Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.
Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed."
Democrats will get our asses handed to us against Huckabee if we reduce him to a straw man. He's one of the most complex, sophisticated, and (as Brooks notes) "ironic" political figures of the past 20 years. We should be praying he's not the nominee, because I don't trust the DNC to understand his appeal. He can win a national election if our rhetoric falls flat. For all practical purposes, he already might be our opposition.
1 Comments:
Sorry to criticize a second one of your posts, Eric, but I think you're overestimating Huck's chances a little. He definitely has a chance but he is pretty certain not to come in first in New Hampshire (evangelicals aren't really a force there), and his chances aren't certain in Michigan or Florida (or even SC although he's pretty likely to win there I think) as a loss in NH will blunt his momentum. Don't forget, btw, the Republican establishment HATES him and is going to do everything they can to make sure he loses.
I'm also going to take issue with the Brooks column. Polls did show that 80% of his support came from evangelicals in Iowa. It may turn out that he is able to gather significant support from other constituencies in later primaries, but his triumph was so far very much a "triumph for the creationist crusaders."
I also think part of the reason the Republican establishment hates him so much (beyond being such an unorthodox conservative) is they know he has a lot of...shall we say...unelectable qualities. He has this kooky national sales tax plan, he granted clemency to a rapist who went on to murder someone, and he's kind of a foreign policy gaff machine. And there's the whole not believing in evolution thing. Much like Giuliani, there are a lot of skeletons in his closet hiding behind his amiable exterior.
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