Since Ryan loves his “lib blogistan,” I’ll write up my thoughts that I’ve already put out in a series of emails.
Huckabee is the nominee. It’s a done deal. I already said, Huckabee wins Iowa, loses New Hampshire, wins South Carolina, and the rest of the South and thus the nomination.
So why will this work. Well let’s examine the other candidates.
Fred Thompson’s campaign was DOA. I never understood why anyone thought he would be a serious candidate. He just never cared about running for president, and it showed. I was shocked he finished just above McCain in Iowa.
When he drops out, I can’t imagine him actually making a speech. I figure he’ll just stop showing up to events.
Giuliani’s “national strategy” was dumb and always was. He completely botched the nominating process for the start. Iowa and New Hampshire, and South Carolina are small states that don’t have many delegates, but the whole reason to campaign in them is to get the inordinate and undeserved press coverage they get.
Giuliani forgot that you’re not campaigning for delegates in Iowa, you’re campaigning for the bump. The press coverage, and the aura of inevitability. Staking your campaign on a bunch of retired New Yorkers in Broward County Florida that don’t even vote until four weeks and four lost elections pass, is a losing strategy. You have no buzz, no positive press, and worst of all, you’re a confirmed loser.
Add in his general big city mayor level of corruption, the fact that MSM is based out of NYC and don’t actually like him from his mayoral stint (for whatever reason), and the fact that evangelicals are squimish, he was going to have a rough time no matter what.
Romney is the only one that can knock off Huckabee. He’ll win New Hampshire, with Huckabee finishing a respectable second or perhaps just begin edged out for third. Still the story will be Huckabee because New Hampshire isn’t supposed to go for evangelicals, and New Hampshire likes voting against Iowa to show that they are “important.”
Romney is Huckabee’s main threat because the corporatists candidate. He’s got the money and the machinery. He can outspend Huckabee in every state, but Romney’s biggest problem is Romney. He never got traction in Iowa or anywhere for that matter. His whole appeal was, “I’m the choice if you don’t like Giuliani.” Not a very rousing message. The base doesn’t trust him. They rightfully think he’s an opportunistic flip flopper. He was pro-choice, and now he’s anti-abortion. He was for for gay rights, now he’s not. He is governor of liberal Taxachussets, and they won’t let him forget that.
The idea that Romney will become the nominee hinges on the idea that the corporatists won’t allow Huckabee to become the nominee. The corporatists don’t like Huckabee because he was a baptist minister prior to becoming governor of Arkansas and he has a populist message. However I don’t think they can stop him.
For 20-30 years the corporatists of the Republican party been playing their Southern Strategy of race baiting and stoking the fires of evangelicals. And for all those years, those people has been believing the lie that they can remake America. Well those kids, have grown up, and the corporatists that were running the party are retiring. Do you think it’s an accident that the Justice Department is full of Regent University graduates? The corporatists had to throw bones to the evangelicals to drag them along, and now those people that caught those bones 20 years are moving up in the hierarchy and bringing like minded people with them.
Now I’m not saying that a theocratic state is around the corner, but I am saying that there are true believers in the Christian right that believe that the party is theirs. I don’t think the plan of Wall Street sitting back and saying, “Tell the hicks we’ll protect them from the homosexuals,” is going to work forever, and the Huckabee candidacy is just the most recent crack to show.
The BBC recently reported on the change of the evangelicals from Bible thumping to a more nuanced message. Even the NY Times picked up the “evangelical left.”
So what does this mean? It means the corporatists of the Republican party are losing control of the evangelicals. They used to be able to say, “Here is your candidate. You show up to the polls and you vote for him, and he’ll end gay abortions,” while the candidate winked and nodded, and took up serpents and “spoke in tongues” and then passed a capital gains tax cut and a free trade agreement to move more jobs offshore.
Now, over twenty years later the evangelicals outnumber the corporatists and their grip is slipping. Sure you have some evangelicals like Joel Olsteen and rest of the absurdly materialistic “prosperity gospel” preachers, that say that Jesus wants you to be rich, and so it’s a sin to tax captial gains and what not. (Actually, I’m giving Joel Olsteen too much credit here. He doesn’t have any political agenda. He’s just running a standard confidence game and lining his pockets with old ladies’ social security checks like all the televangelists before him, but the corporatist evangelicals with the whole divine right undercurrent are a very real phenomenon, and the ones the Wall Street corporatists enjoy the most.
Then you have the social only evangelicals that want to keep the sodomites down, but want to keep their jobs as well. In times of economic uncertainty, this is a pretty big group, and this is who Huckabee talks to.
Then finally, you have evangelical left, that for some reason feels compelled to be born again, but is no longer buying into the Republican platform at any level. A small group, yes, but a growing group.
So why won’t the corporatists simply abandon Romney and back McCain and give him the nomination? Because even if the corporatists move to McCain, it won’t matter, because the base isn’t going to vote for McCain, even with, as Ryan put it, “[the media] publicly felating him every step of the way.”
McCain is regarded as a RINO. He’s the Joe Lieberman of the Republican party. Yes he’s backed Iraq. Yes, he backed the surge. And yes, we’re supposed to believe that the surge is “working,” but none of that matters. He’s “John McCain: the Democrats favorite Republican.” This is John McCain, who said called Robertson and Falwell in 2000, ”agents of intolerance.”
In 2000, John McCain ran as John McCain, the “Goldwater conservative” as he described himself, and he learned that there was no place in the 2000 Republican party for that kind of Republican. So starting in 2006, when he decided he’d run for president again, he started courting the religious right.
The christian right may be stupid, but they’re not that stupid. McCain is a poser, and no amount of adoration by the press is going to convince them otherwise. The MSM loves McCain because of the real John McCain. But whenever the Liberal Media Elite™ lavishes praise on him, it just confirms that McCain is not a real Republican. Or as I graphically put it, “[W]henever the Tim Russert et. al try to suck the cum from McCain’s balls, they’re sucking the life from his campaign.”
For Huckabee not to win the nomination, Huckabee has to screw it up. Huckabee has gotten the reputation of being a lightweight when it comes to international events, but frankly that’s not going to matter. It didn’t matter in 2000. It didn’t matter in 2004. And it’s not going to matter in 2008. The conventional wisdom (i.e. what a bunch of New York City news editors sitting around a water cooler think) is that Huckabee’s unpreparedness is a result of not having a staff to keep him up to date. That’s a pretty good insulator. Also, immediately after Iowa Chris Matthews was interviewing Huckabee and mentioned an article in the Jerusalem Post, and Huckabee mentioned that it was actually an AP story that the Jerusalem Post picked up. Matthews was visibly surprised (and said so) that Huckabee knew that. A few more moments like that, and Huckabee is in the clear on being out of touch.
Huckabee is probably already raking in the dough after his win in Iowa. This means he will be better financed to take on Romney and the rest. Huckabee is in this until the end. Huckabee’s biggest problem now is going to be hiring people to help him spend that money. A few bad moves and it can move away from him, but I don’t think Huckabee is going to do that. He’s comfortable with himself and his campaign. He’s got a winning formula and he’s going to stick with it.
Huckabee is going to lose New Hampshire, but place a second, perhaps just be eked out for a close third. This loss won’t matter because he already has the buzz from Iowa, and is expected to do well in South Carolina. Also the press has already laughed about New Hampshire having a habit of choosing someone different from Iowa. New Hampshire doesn’t have nearly as many evangelicals as the south and the midwest, but they might buy into Huckabee’s populist message, and that’s unique twist that differentiates himself from the rest of the pack, and put people that are wary of his evangelical background at ease.
Huckabee can appeal to everyone, and that’s why he’s going to get the nomination.