crossposted from dailykos
And today features two editorial columns attacking him, neither behind the subscription wall. The first is by Peggy Noonan, and is entitled American Pastoral: Mike Huckabee preaches to the choir, but not everyone's singing along. The second is by DC-based member of the editorial board Kimberly Strassel in her regular Firday "Potomac Watch" column. This one is entitled Leap of Faith: Mike Huckabee and Little Rock ethics. It is worth taking the time to read both to see how the chattering class of non-theocon conservatives are reacting to the prospect of a Huckabee nomination. And the best part is because the pieces are not behind the subscription wall you don't have to give Rupert Murdoch a dime.
Keep reading for some excerpts and analysis by yours truly.
Let's look at Noonan's piece first. She begins by telling us that she had to watch the infamous Christmas ad twice before she saw the cross in the background. And her reaction can be summed up in one sentence:
Is there a word for "This is nice" and "This is creepy"? For that is what I felt. This is so sweet-appalling.She notes that in general we don't "hit people over the head" explicitly with our expressions of faith when in a political context. She offers a further personal reaction upon reflection to the ad:
wound up thinking this: That guy is using the cross so I'll like him. That doesn't tell me what he thinks of Jesus, but it does tell me what he thinks of me. He thinks I'm dim. He thinks I will associate my savior with his candidacy. Bleh.
She has no doubt it was no accident that the image of the cross appears. You can read her column for her observation of Huckabee's reactions when challenged on it. What is more interesting is the insight she offers as to how Republican strategists approach their advertising, especially in Iowa. Note the following:
Ken Mehlman, the former Republican chairman, once bragged in my presence that in every ad he did he put in something wrong--something that went too far, something debatable. TV producers, ever hungry for new controversy, would play the commercial over and over as pundits on the panel deliberated over its meaning. This got the commercial played free all over the news.The cross is the reason you saw the commercial. The cross made it break through.
Noonan makes an interesting observation about Huckabee that is worth quoting:
Mr. Huckabee reminds me of two governors who became president, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Like Mr. Clinton, he is a natural, charming, bright and friendly. Yet one senses something unsavory there, something not so nice. Like Mr. Bush, his approach to politics seems, at bottom, highly emotional, marked by great spurts of feeling and mighty declarations as to what the Lord wants. The problem with this, and with Bushian compassionate conservatism, which seems to have an echo in Mr. Huckabee's Christianism, is that to the extent it is a philosophy, it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to "This is what God wants." This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it.She is worried that the direction he is taking his campaign can potentially tear apart the Republican party [observation from teacherken - do we interpret this as meaning that she is afraid the traditional party elders and economic conservatives won't be able to control a party whose nominee is a religious conservative, that they want the religious conservative votes but not their ideas driving the campaign?]. She ends her piece with a religiously based dig at the former pulpit minister Huckabee:
Could he win the nomination? Who knows? It's all a bubbling stew on the Republican side, and no one knows who'll float to the top. In an interview this week with David Brody of CBN, Mr. Huckabee said people everywhere were coming to him and saying, "We are claiming Isaiah 54 for you, that the weapons formed against you will not prosper."Prayer is powerful. But Huckabee's critics say he's a manipulator with a mean streak and little knowledge of the world. And Isaiah 54 doesn't say anything about self-inflicted wounds.
Nosw let's turn to Strassel. She is doing us a real favor should Huckabee actually get the nomination. Let me give you the thrust of her piece in one sentence, which appears at the end of her third paragraph:
It isn't just that Mr. Huckabee is far from a traditional conservative; he's a potential ethical time bomb.But it is not just that she provides in one place an extensive list of all of good ol boy Mike's ethical problems. It is how she sets it up that I find so interesting. Let's look at her two intro paragraphs:
As pigs in pokes go, the Democratic Party bought itself a big one in 1988. Michael Dukakis was relatively unknown, but he was also the last man standing. Only too late did his party, along with the rest of the country, realize Mr. Dukakis was a typecast liberal--a furlougher of felons, and a guy who looked mighty awkward in a tank.This is what happens when a party takes a flyer, and it could be Republicans' turn with Mike Huckabee. The former Baptist minister and governor of Arkansas is surging in Iowa, and is tied with Rudy Giuliani in national polls. He's selling his party on a simple message: He's not those other guys, with their flip-flops and different faiths, and dicey social positions. As to what Mr. Huckabee is--that's as unknown to most voters as the Almighty himself.
Ooh, that's nasty. Comparing Huckabee to Mike Dukakis! How nasty can one Republican be towards another? Of course, note the key expressions "a furlougher of felons" - although Strassel does not choose to explicitly describe the incident that might haunt Huckabee (and remember that in 1988 it was Al Gore who first elliptically raised Willie Horton against Dukakis). Strassel tries in passing to rehabilitate Rudy (thereby demonstrating not only Murdoch's support but also how much the economic conservatives wanted someone they knew?) in this snippet:
Some will also argue Mr. Huckabee is no more ethically challenged than Mr. Giuliani, who is getting pounded with questions about Judith Nathan's security detail and Giuliani Partner clients. The difference is that Hizzoner is a celebrity whose past bones were long ago picked clean by the media crows. Even the Nathan flap is an extension of news that made the rounds five years ago.Of course, Strassel's assessment of the current furor over Giuliani's escapades is laughable on several counts, and seems oblivious to some of the more recent news that has broken in that arena.
Strassel worries that the GOp already has problems with financial scandals, and that Huckabee might present an unfortunate comparison with one Democratic candidate who has so far avoided being tarred with scandal - she is apparently very afraid of Barack Obama.
She also displays a bit of a tin-foil hat mentality. Try this paragraph:
Democrats know it. Here's an interesting statistic: Since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic National Committee has released 102 direct attacks on Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani has warranted 78; John McCain 68; Fred Thompson 21. Mike Huckabee? Four. The most recent of these landed back in March. GOP voters may not have examined Mr. Huckabee's record, but the left has--and they love what they see.
So, because the Democrats haven't attacked Huckabee as much as the other candidates that is proof that Republicans shouldn't support him? I have one immediate response - this is the last proof I will ever need of the lack of critical thinking skills by members of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
Perhaps you need a good laugh today? If so, go read the the two columns. We tend to spend a lot of time here in our own partisan internecine warfare, with adherents of one candidate smashing another. But I have yet to see a semi-official organ of the party - which is not an unfair description of the editorial and op-ed pages of the WSJ with respect to the "other party' - offer anything so concerted against one of our leading candidates.
I don't know about you, but reading this brightened up my day.
What do you think? Does it mean anything? Or is it the last gasp of a group within the Republican party who may be seeing their previous influence being supplanted by something else, by the rise of a candidate who is not tied to their agenda? And whether or not they succeed in taking down Huckabee, might these kinds of pieces not indicate an internal battle capable of doing to the Republicans what we Democrats have so often in the past done to ourselves?
Peace.
peace.
The fiscal conservatives will always vote Republican over the pro-tax Democrats
Most social conservatives are motivated by abortion and gays and the Democrats are on the wrong side of that issue as well
In conclusion we might be fighting but we aren't going to the democrats anytime soon. To be fair the same can be said for democrat internal squabbles.
However on the Virginia side the RoVa vs NoVa issue is not going to go away for the Democrats. It will be interesting to see what the Senate does this year and the Moran vs Deeds race will be extremely intersting to watch
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At the same time there is much more to politics. I sincerely hope all of you have a wonderful time with your families and Merry Christmas if applicable.
Even worse! The Monster insists on riding in the Republican Limo throughout the entire general election campaign! It's enough to give all Nice Polite Republicans a fatal case of the vapors! Well, this is what happens when the Country Club Wing of the Republican Party fails to hire someone to do its homework.
Apparently, the plan was to nominate either Rudy or Mitt. To that end, someone, somehow secured a Pat Robertson Seal of Approval for Rudy. That, coupled with chants of "9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11," was supposed to placate the Fundamentalists enough that they would swallow their fear of voting for an adulterous, big-city, gay-loving, cross-dressing mayor. However, just in case the Fundies refused to hold their noses and vote for Rudy, Mitt was available to serve as back-up Country Club (but Fundie-Friendly) Republican nominee. Mitt, the thinking went, can play the devout Mormon card and, to most Country Club Republicans, devout Mormonism is pretty much the same as Fundamentalism anyway.
Of course, if the Country Club Wing had hired someone to do its homework, it would have known that Rudy has a seemingly endless supply of skeletons yet to emerge from his closet and that Mitt's Mormonism is viewed by most Fundamentalists as an evil cult. Oh well. Live and learn. Win some, lose some.
The biggest problem, however, for the Country Club Wing is not the sinking poll numbers of Rudy and Mitt, but the rising poll numbers of Obama and Edwards. Hillary, after all, is not really that far from qualifying as a fellow Wall Street Journal readin' Country Club Republican. Obama and Edwards are donkeys of a different color. Under either of their administrations, some Republicans may see their annual income plummet from $400 million all the way down to $398 million. And, with real estate prices continuing to fall, this would be a really bad time to have to sell off one of your fifteen vacation homes.
Thus, understandably, we have panic at the Wall Street Journal.
******
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, both.
And Teacherken, I hope you're planning to post your traditional New Year's Day "Why Bother" diary. It's my New Year's tradition to read it.
The appealing aspects of Huckabee's politics and persona account for much of this. But part of his rise in Iowa is attributable to something rather less appealing: playing the religion card. The other major candidates - John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson - either never figured out how to use it or had the decency to refuse to deploy it......Forget the implications of the idea that being a "Christian leader" is some special qualification for the presidency of a country whose Constitution (Article VI) explicitly rejects any religious test for office. Just imagine that Huckabee were running one-on-one in Iowa against Joe Lieberman. (It's a thought experiment. Stay with me.) If he had run the same ad in those circumstances, it would have raised an outcry. The subtext - who's the Christian in this race? - would have been too obvious to ignore, the appeal to bigotry too clear.
And Krauthamer ends with this:
The God of the Founders, the God on the coinage, the God for whom Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day is the ineffable, ecumenical, nonsectarian Providence of the American civil religion whose relation to this blessed land is without appeal to any particular testament or ritual. Every mention of God in every inaugural address in American history refers to the deity in this kind of all-embracing, universal, nondenominational way. (The one exception: William Henry Harrison. He caught cold delivering that inaugural address. Thirty-one days later, he was dead. Draw your own conclusion.) I suspect that neither Jefferson's Providence nor Washington's Great Author nor Lincoln's Almighty would look kindly on the exploitation of religious differences for political gain. It is un-American. It is unfortunate that Romney has had to justify himself in response.
It seems that a large portion of the non-theocratic right was happy to exploit the Christian vote. But they didn't really like those Christians so much after all, a point David Kuo, former top Bush aide and head of the White HOuse Office of Faith Based and Community Intiatives made in his book Tempting Faith
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how the Christian Right will react as it realizes that it has been played for years by the Wall Street crowd.