Like Dean, Huckabee is an under-vetted former governor who is manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States. Like Dean, he is rising toward the top of polls in a crowded field based on his appeal to a particular niche of his party. As with Dean, his vulnerabilities in a general election are so screamingly obvious that it's hard to believe that primary voters, once they focus seriously on their choice, will nominate him.
Someone needs to tell Huckabee. His first TV ads in Iowa touted him as a "Christian leader," and his target audience of evangelicals has responded. But according to a Pew poll released in early December, only 1 in 7 nonevangelical Republicans support him in Iowa and 1 in 20 nonevangelicals in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
That means if you line up 7 Iowa Huck supporters, 6 (85.7%) would be evangelical Christian. And if line up 20 Huck fans in NH and SC, 19 (95%) would be evangelicals.
I have nothing against evangelicals. They're wonderful! However, virtually nobody else is supporting Clemency Huck.
His pastor-to-pastor email circuit seemed to have worked wonders. However, nothing else has.
Though evangelicals play a vital role in the Republican party, a viable Republican nominee needs more than their support in the general election.
Rich continues:
Huckabee has declared that he doesn't believe in evolution. Even if there are many people in America who agree with him, his position would play into the image of Republicans as the anti-science party. This would tend to push away independents and upper-income Republicans. In short, Huckabee would take a strength of the GOP and, through overplaying it, make it a weakness.
He'd do the same on taxes. In general, the public tends to support Democratic proposals for bigger government, which Republicans counter by saying that the proposals will require higher taxes. Huckabee will be equipped poorly to make this traditional Republican comeback, given his tax-raising history in Arkansas. Huckabee tries to compensate with a sales-tax scheme that allows him to say he supports eliminating the IRS, but is so wildly implausible that it would be a liability in a general election.
Then, there's national security, the Republican trump card during the Cold War and after 9/11. Huckabee not only has zero national-security credentials, he basically has no foreign-policy advisers either, as a New York Times Magazine piece this Sunday makes clear. In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in September, Huckabee struck notes seemingly borrowed from Barack Obama, hitting the Bush administration for its "bunker mentality" and strongly supporting direct talks with Iran. A foreign-policy debate with a Democratic nominee would be a competition over who can promise to be nicer to foreign countries.
1 comment:
As the obvious liberal Dem's choice for the Republican Nominee for 2008 I humbly offer my limmerick:
There once was a governor named Huck,
And the Liberal Dems couldn’t believe their luck!
They pushed for the nod
From the GOP bod
So they’d win and Republicans would be stuck — with a loser!
Romney in 2008!!
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