A few comments about Huckabee

Mike Huckabee is no longer an unknown third tier candidate for the Republican Nomination for President, so the media has begun taking notice.

Margaret Carlson has an interesting article on Huckabee entitled "Huckabee's Boom May Be Ready to Bust".

Huckabee's Moment

If Huckabee's moment lasts a couple more weeks, he will win the Iowa caucuses. Like an upset win by former Senator John Edwards in the caucuses, a Huckabee victory would mix up the race. It would slow Romney and leave time for Rudy Giuliani to win in big states later, and maybe for Thompson to get a second look from the base.

Huckabee surely must be aware of how quickly the expectations game can flip. A long shot who gets 20 percent in Iowa heads to New Hampshire a hero. A frontrunner who gets 21 percent heads for home.

James Pinkerton of Newsday writes that "Huckabee, like Reagan, wouldn't be an 'easy kill'".

some Democrats maintain that the former Arkansas governor, in particular, has a "glass jaw." Hence the headline in Tuesday's Drudge Report: "Dems Hold Fire on Huckabee; See 'Easy Kill' In General Election." [Snip]

it's certainly true that the Democratic National Committee has focused its fire on Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. So maybe Huckabee is the weakest Republican candidate, and the Democrats just can't wait to get thrown into his Razorback brier patch.

But it's also possible that the Democrats might have miscalculated the Republican race - certainly plenty of Republicans have done so - and now they are spinning, while reassessing.

Pinkerton's argument is that a lot depends on who the Democrats nominate for President, probably either Clinton or Obama. If either of them becomes the Democratic nominee and comes across as an "effete coastal Liberal" and if Huckabee can survive the primary process and get the Republican nomination, then he will be the candidate from the center of America running against the coastal Liberal. Pinkerton argues that the center candidate always wins the Presidential election.

Steven Stark writes at Real Clear Politics "Is Huckabee the New Jimmy Carter?"

For the past 25 years or so, Republicans have made Jimmy Carter and his presidency one of their favorite punching bags -- the modern equivalent of what the Democrats did to Herbert Hoover two generations ago. "Look what happens when you nominate someone without much experience, who comes out of nowhere," they've said. Or, "He was just a little too odd or unconventional to be an effective president."

Now, though, the Republicans may want to keep their opinions of Carter (for whom I worked in the 1976 presidential campaign) to themselves. That's because if they nominate Mike Huckabee -- who this past week was unexpectedly leading the field in at least one national GOP poll and in Iowa -- they're going to be lining up behind someone who looks awfully similar to their bête noir. [Snip]

What made the emergence of both Carter and Huckabee possible was that they adeptly read a shift in the public mood. After Vietnam and Watergate, Carter saw that the country might opt for a complete outsider, whose calling card was his utter lack of connection to anything that had been going on in Washington. Huckabee, too, is benefiting from a similar fed-up public mood, particularly in a party that still has to figure out how to separate itself gracefully from an unpopular president.

In fact, in their quests, both had the hidden good fortune to be as unknown as they were when the campaign started. The bad news about being obscure early in the race is that you don't get media coverage. But the good news is that this allows you to listen to voters and shift your approach and style accordingly before the cameras start rolling. Like Carter, at least in the early days, Huckabee has near-perfect pitch.

From Toby Harndon of the Telegraph is an article entitled " Mike Huckabee apologises for Mormon 'smear' ".

Mike Huckabee has apologised to Mitt Romney, his Republican rival for the White House, for suggesting that the former Massachusetts governor and his fellow Mormons believe that "Jesus and the devil are brothers".

The apology came as the race for the Republican presidential nomination increasingly centred on personal religious faith. [Snip]

"I went to Mitt Romney and apologised to him, because I said, I would never try, ever, to try to somehow pick out some point of your faith and make it, you know, an issue," Mr Huckabee said after the last Republican debate before the January 3rd Iowa caucuses. [Snip]

Mr Romney’s campaign, which has been relentlessly criticising Mr Huckabee on immigration and tax issues and this week hit him with the first attack advertisement against a named fellow-party candidate, turned on Mr Huckabee over the comment.

"It’s hard to read it as anything other than an attempt to stir up anti-Mormon prejudice," said Jim Talent, a former senator and key Romney backer.

Chip Saltsman, Mr Huckabee’s campaign manager, said it was an innocent, offhand remarks made in the form of a question and was in no way intended to be a smear.

I wonder how many of the previously clueless corporate media reporters are going back to read Max Brantley's article on Huckabee at Salon entitled "The dark side of Mike Huckabee?" (Sit through the ad to get a Salon day pass. It's quick and it's worth it.)