Huckabee's Underrated Electability
One of the things that’s baffled me about recent primary punditry is the constant belittling of Huckabee’s chances. Matt Yglesias, for example, thinks that Huckabee couldn’t win a general election because he’s a “white evangelical identity politics candidate.” I’ve heard others express similar views.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. To start with, Huckabee is the most talented campaigner in the Republican field. He’s personable, quick on his feet and knows how to use self-deprecating humor to his advantage.
The rap against Huckabee seems to be that he’s the second coming of Pat Robertson and will therefore scare off independents with his right-wing social views. I think this critique misfires for a couple of reasons. In the first place, every Republican candidate other than Rudy holds (or at least pretends to hold) substantive views on social issues that are quite similar to Huckabee’s. Every serious Republican candidate (by which I exclude Rudy) is pro-life and anti-gay. Voters for whom those issues are deal-breakers just aren’t going to vote Republican no matter who the nominee is. So Huckabee’s not at a disadvantage on that score.
On the other hand, as Huckabee frequently points out, he’s very good at defending conservative views without sounding angry about it. He’s very conservative on social issues, but he doesn’t sound that conservative when he’s on the campaign trail. For voters who aren’t paying very close attention (and that includes a lot of swing voters) Huckabee is likely to sound like the kind of candidate they’re comfortable with.
I think a lot of members of the liberal (and libertarian) secular elite have a weird blind spot when it comes to religion and religious rhetoric in politics. They tend to find sincere religious sentiments so alien that anyone who is conversant with the language of faith sounds nutty to them. But like it or not, this is still a predominantly religious country, and lots of voters respond well to religious rhetoric of the non-angry variety. I personally find it every bit as off-putting as Matt does, but we’re in the minority.
Most importantly, as Matt himself points out, of all the Republican candidates, Huckabee is most in touch with the political mood of the country in 2008. Huckabee’s populist rhetoric has the potential to appeal to the same sorts of disaffected voters that gave Ross Perot 19 percent of the vote in 1992. This is something that Rudy McRomney, would be simply incapable of doing. And his lack of establishment ties makes him the only Republican (other than Ron Paul) who could plausibly distance himself from the Bush administration, which will be a large advantage in the general election.
If I were a Democratic strategist, I would be far more worried about a Mike Huckabee nomination than about running against Rudy McRomney.
He has no money. The fact that he has no money is exacerbated by the fact that he is hated by the fiscal conservatives who fund (to a much larger degree than the evangelicals) the Republican party.
He has no policy apparatus. His lack of a policy apparatus is exacerbated by the fact that he is not generally conversant in many of the areas of political dialogue. Unlike Mitt Romney, he is not a wonk; he has demonstrated on several occasions that he doesn’t have the broad knowledge necessary to speak extemporaneously on the details of policy. Unlike John McCain, he lacks many decades of service in national government. Unlike Fred Thompson, he lacks the natural charisma and oratory skills to cover up his lack of experience.
He is hated— hated— by the national Republican apparatus, whose influence and support is essential to running a general election campaign. The conventional wisdom may be that the will rally around whoever the nominee is. But as others have said, I think that it is more important for the party mechanism to remain in control of the party than to remain in c control of the country— I believe the Republican leadership would rather lose with their guy than win with another. Huckabee is running a bare-bones campaign staff that is workable in Iowa and New Hampshire but is inadequate for a national campaign. He has the reformer/candidate for change’s tendency to piss people in his own political ideology off, but he is running for the incumbent party.
You perceive him as the religious candidate. Fair enough. The religious right did not save the Congress for the Republicans in 2006. It seems that the ability of gay marriage and abortion to rally the religious right is flagging. The endorsement of Rudy Giuliani by Pat Robertson seems to me to be an indication of a fracturing ideological unit. The religious right, despite the perception of them as an all-powerful bloc, don’t represent as many people as you assume, or so it seems to me.
Most importantly, you and Yglesias think his “candidate of change”, man of his times appeal is a strength. I disagree, and disagree entirely if the candidate is Barack Obama. Huckabee can’t out Obama Obama. Obama’s aura of change and healing divides— however media-created and unfair that characterization may be— is not going to be taken from him by Mike Huckabee. And while I don’t think conservative Republicans looking for change will suddenly embrace Obama, moderate Republicans might; or they might be so unmotivated as to stay home. And I don’t think it’s ever an advantage in electoral politics to hew too closely to your opponents message, when he incorporates that message so much more powerfully for the media and much of the public.
— Freddie · Jan 8, 05:13 AM · #
This reminds me of the debate over Howard Dean’s electability in 2004 — virtually all pundits assumed Dean would do poorly in a general election, but how many votes did John Kerry win that Howard Dean would have lost? Maybe many. I can’t say for sure. But my guess is that while there was a downside risk with Dean, attributable to his prickly personality and lack of polish, there was also a considerable upside potential: his anger, his zest for political combat might have made him seem like less of a wimp.
I agree that it’s not obvious that Huckabee would do poorly in a general election. He’s difficult to characterize as an angry right-winger. Smart Democrats like Ted Strickland think Huckabee would be formidable.
But I expect deep divisions among Republicans, the enthusiasm gap, and a united Democratic party would do him in. If a Rudy McRomney candidate united Republicans, you’re right, he’d still lose. That’s where McCain, theoretically, comes in: Americans don’t like the Iraq War, but they don’t want to lose. Think Nixon.
(I realize that this is very CW.)
— Reihan · Jan 8, 05:14 AM · #
Not to say that I think you’re totally off— just bringing up some caveats.
— Freddie · Jan 8, 05:18 AM · #
Perhaps I’m just pointing to something you’ve already seen, but I found this crookedtimber post really interesting: Huckabee seems to do poorly with Catholics. So perhaps that’s evidence that he’s a polarizing figure even to some non secular folk. I hardly feel confident to assert that, though.
— Justin · Jan 8, 05:57 AM · #
Freddie, you think Thompson has more charisma than Huckabee? We must have been watching different debates. I didn’t say he was the religious candidate. What I said was that his religiosity isn’t likely to hurt him in a general election, because he seems politically savvy enough to reach beyond his base of evangelical Christians. That’s what the “conservative but not angry about it” schtick is all about.
I also never said he’d out-Obama Obama. The way I think an Obama-Huckabee campaign would work out is that Huckabee would paint Obama as an Ivy League elitist while Huckabee was the candidate of the working man. I have no idea how a race like that would turn out, but I certainly don’t think an Obama victory would be assured in that case. Obama might be the candidate of “change,” but a former president of the Harvard Law Review is going to have an awfully hard time out-populisting a former Baptist preacher.
Reihan, I think you’re right, but it’s not obvious to me that McCain could unite the Republican party either. The base doesn’t just hate McCain for his immigration stands. They’ve got a list of grievances stretching back to McCain-Feingold in the 1990s. On the other hand, it seems like conservative hatred of Huckabee is largely limited to the current inside-the-beltway Republican establishment. I don’t get a sense that rank-and-file Republicans have any particular dislike for the guy, and they’ll certainly rally behind him against either Obama or Hillary.
Justin, that’s very interesting, although it’s complicated by the fact that protestants might also have stronger anti-Mormon prejudices than Catholics. Religion is weird.
— Tim Lee · Jan 8, 06:16 AM · #
What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months. For Germany’s prestige in East and West and before the whole world this handshake with the Papacy, the greatest moral power in the history of the world, is a feat of immeasurable blessing. …May God preserve the Reich Chancellor for our people.
- Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Bavaria, praising Adolf Hitler for the Concordat, July 24, 1933
The word “German” is God’s Word! Whosoever understands this is released from all theological conflicts. This is German: return home to Germany and leave behind egoism and your feelings of abandonment. …Christ has come to us through the person of Adolf Hitler. …Hitler has taken root in us; through his strength, through his honesty, his faith and his idealism we have found our way to paradise.
- Kirchenrat Leutheusser, addressing German Christians in Saalfeld, August 30, 1933
SOME foolish American Religious FANATICS are proving to be as easiliy LED as the German Christians were. That was not a good thing then … and not a good thing now.
— rjp3 · Jan 8, 03:57 PM · #
[Adolf Hitler is] the tool of God, called upon to overcome Judaism…
- Father Senn, a Catholic priest, writing in a Catholic publication, May 15, 1934
Mike Huckabee is just a tool.
His followers believe he was called to overcome Islamists. (A real threat btw – but the last thing we need is an undereducated – in joke schools – minister leading our country.
— rjp3 · Jan 8, 03:59 PM · #
OF COURSE … Huckabee is doing poorly with Catholics … to them he is the leader of a FALSE church … a lying ANTICHRIST leading people AWAY from Salvation.
— rjp3 · Jan 8, 04:07 PM · #
Strangely enough, rjp3, I go to a Catholic school and there is precisely
zeroresentment towards the Baptists. They think that they are strange, certainly, and apparently Ratzinger does not even consider them a “Church” but there is decidedly no hatred there. Indeed, they arefarmore disdainful towards heathenly, hedonistic atheists such as myself.As for Huckabee, well he is bare of cash and seems not to have a clue what he is talking about when it comes to foreign policy. I imagine that Obama would pick him apart.
— James · Jan 8, 08:04 PM · #
Another consideration: “President Huckabee” sounds ridiculous.
— Joules · Jan 9, 06:26 AM · #
I think the last thing we need is another Christian Presidency as per my link.
— paul martin · Jan 13, 02:10 AM · #