Huckabee Watch

All of them were right.

Like Lennie Small, David Huckabee (pictured above in Janet’s lap) didn’t mean to hurt the stray dog, he just loved it too hard.

During this week’s republican debate in Iowa, Mitt Romney introduced an intriguing model:

We’re not going to get the White House nor strengthen America unless we can pull together the coalition of conservatives and conservative thought that has made us successful as a party. And that’s social conservatives. It’s also economic conservatives. And foreign policy and defense conservatives.

Those three together form the three legs of the Republican stool that allowed Ronald Reagan to get elected and allowed our party to have strength over the last several decades.

Adopting Romney’s construction, we have three distinct stakeholders participating in the Republican nomination: Social conservatives, Economic conservatives, and Defense conservatives.

Clearly, Huckabee is enjoying strong support from the social conservative “leg” of Romney’s stool. He has either achieved — or is on his way to achieving — a plurality in every poll taken about the GOP nomination; meanwhile, his four other “viable” (McCain, Thompson, Romney, Giuliani) opponents have lost grip on the social conservative leg and are jockeying for the other two legs.

Romney’s model might suggest a balance of ideological influence by the three distinct stakeholders under the “Conservative” umbrella, but Huckabee reminds us that when it comes to electoral influence, social conservatives make Romney’s stool uncomfortably wobbly for the Defense/Economic conservatives.

The Defense/Economic conservatives have always had more influence and bigger megaphones. They have well-funded, palatial think tanks (with a quota of cubicles for their kooky cousins, the social conservatives), book publishing companies, newspapers, and magazines. They have Rupert Murdock on speed dial.

None of that is important to Huckabee, though. He’s got the numbers.

We’re seeing this paradox playing out right now: as the press on Huckabee gets louder and nastier (mostly from the Right), Huckabee’s poll numbers go higher and higher. This phenomenon (worse press = better numbers) will become even more incongruous over the next two weeks, and it will pave Huckabee’s way to becoming the republican nominee.

1:00 CST: Carolyn Washburn, Des Moines Register editor kicks off. “First time since summer Republicans have gone head-to-head in Iowa”
Stage setup (from left to right - audience view): Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Alan Keyes

“6 in 10 [likely Caucus-goers] said they could still be persuaded”

“Not going to spend a lot of time on Iraq & Immigration”.. advantage: Huckabee?

What the hell is Alan Keyes doing on stage?

Question 1 - U.S. Debt: does it create a security risk?

Huckabee said yes, gave a pretty straight-forward 3-point answer. Alan Keyes gave a shoutout to the fair tax, a Huckabee platform cornerstone.

(more…)

“Hello all you happy people. You know what? I’m still going to win Iowa.”

The gloves are coming off, particularly on the Right…

You know you’ve rocked the boat when, as a Republican, you get this kind of rough treatment from Fox News Sunday.

Andrew Sullivan is (unsurprisingly) dismayed by Huckabee’s non-apology for the AIDS quarantine remarks, finds echoes of Bush.

National Review jumps Huckabee on foreign policy.

Huck (playa) hates Mormons? Drudge started this story by posting the speech - with friends like these…

Romney is “convinced as people take a good hard look at Mike Huckabee’s record, they’ll see this is a guy who is soft on criminals, soft on illegal aliens, but hard on taxpayers. And that’s not what’s going to lead the Republican party to take the White House.”
And Mitt will be the first to air a GOP-on-GOP attack ad, targeting Huckabee on immigration.

On the other hand - is all this Huckabee-bashing too little too late?

No wonder Mitt’s scared. From the WP: “Huckabee may well advance to the nomination finals,” said John Weaver, who was McCain’s chief strategists until they had a parting of the ways last summer, “and in doing so accomplish something neither Rudy or McCain could do: eliminate Romney.”

We already knew South Carolina would be a pitch straight into Huckabee’s wheelhouse, but keep an eye on what is sure to be an emerging story: Huckabee’s Iowa surge is starting to impact the New Hampshire polls.

And last but not least, Frank Rich asks whether Huck could be “The Republican Obama”. This is great press, but I’m more intrigued by Cornel West’s endorsement!
Even Barack can’t claim that.