Huckaboob
The former Governor of Arkansas — there’s a presidential pedigree of recent vintage for you — has been an outsider for most of the race for the Republican nomination. But in the space of a month he has jumped from fifth in the national opinion polls to a tie for first place with Rudolph Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York. Much more importantly, he seems to have established a large lead in Iowa, the state that votes first on January 3.
In case you were inclined to think, by the way, that it’s just supercilious Englishmen who think Huckabee is an odd sort of name for a president, it was the Texan Dan Bartlett, George Bush’s former communications chief, who said a few months ago that Mr Huckabee could not be taken seriously as presidential material because of his name. That is shaping up to be about as bankable as many other Bush Administration judgments.
The current surge — the Huckaboom as it has inevitably been dubbed — is due to a number of factors. Perhaps the most obvious is religion. Mr Huckabee is a Baptist preacher and comes closer than any of the Republicans to meeting the confessional requirements of Christian evangelical orthodoxy. Certainly, set against the other candidates — a Mormon, a multiply married Catholic and a collection of milquetoast Protestants — he fits the bill.
And yet he is not, to be fair, straight out of central casting’s collection of fire-breathing televangelists. He is very much a representative of a modern breed of conservative Christian — anti-abortion and against gay marriage, certainly, but with a much broader horizon. He talks in almost social democratic terms about inequality. When Governor, he raised taxes to fund programmes for the poor and was decidedly soft on illegal immigrants, giving them scholarships for higher education. He is likeable, funny and self-deprecating.
sigh
Moving on:
Circumstances have helped to bring about this disarray. But so too have eight years of a Bush Administration that has redefined competence downwards and a party that grew corrupt and complacent as it controlled Congress. All this might suggest that, with or without a Huckaboom, the Republicans don’t stand a chance in any case next year.
But that assumes the Democrats will nominate an unthreatening, run-of-the-mill candidate who can sail unmolested to victory. Instead they are going to choose either a clever woman who is despised by half the country, or an appealing young black man, who, if elected, would have the least relevant experience of any president in the history of the country.
The Republicans only look dead.
Hmm.
Update:
It gets better.
Power Line - He’s not a doctor of theology, he just plays one on TV
Huckabee said:
I’m as strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s a theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well.
…The Huckabee campaign stated: “Governor Huckabee doesn’t have a theology degree. He only spent a year in seminary.”
So did Algore.
(If there’s not a comic strip in that, I don’t know where there is.)
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