“Huckabee is in the race to take Romney out of the way for McCain.”
That’s what Rush Limbaugh said in the second hour of his show today. I happened to be in my car and listening. Before that, I was going to entitle this post “Will Huckabee Be The Evangelical Spoiler in This Race?” I guess my thinking was not as original as I thought.
We don’t do a lot of political commentary on this blog because we focus on The Question, but this is a subject where the connection between the two is clear: The primary effect of Mike Huckabee’s success will be to stop Romney.
Here’s my thinking. In terms of polls, we are looking at these numbers:
- Heading into the January 15 Michigan contest, the RealClearPolitics average shows Romney at 20.3%, Huckabee at 19.3%, and McCain at 16.3%. These data do not reflect the New Hampshire outcome, so McCain may be getting a bounce.
- In Nevada (January 19), it’s Giuliani and Romney both at 23.7, Huckabee at 15.3, Thompson 9.7, McCain 7.3.
- In South Carolina (also January 19), it’s Huckabee 32.3%, McCain 19.7, Romney 16.0, with Giuliani and Thompson both at 9%.
- Florida (January 29): Giuliani 26.5, Huckabee 21.3, Romney 16.5, McCain 14.3, Thompson 8.5.
My premises, with which you are free to disagree:
1. Huckabee cannot win the nomination or the election. He lacks the money, the organization, and the personal depth as a candidate to do either. Huckabee himself probably thinks he may have a shot, if things go his way; but he is realistic and realizes he probably won’t end up the nominee.
2. He can, however, bleed off support from Romney. If Huckabee were not in the above races, the lion’s share of his votes would go to Romney, the only other candidate who’s running vigorously and credibly as a social conservative. No, some hard-core Evangelicals would never vote for Romney, but I still think that’s a fringe group. (I am prepared to be convinced otherwise.) Still, a great many Evangelicals will vote for Huckabee simply because he’s “their guy,” like they did in Iowa. Huckabee knows this; so does John McCain.
If you don’t think Huck is magnet for socially conservative Evangelical votes, how else can we explain the South Carolina numbers above? Also, if you don’t think he is getting support from religious bigots, just take a look here.
If Huckabee continues to get the love he’s getting from the MSM and continues in the Pied Piper role he seems to fill so well, the likely result is that neither he nor Romney will be the nominee. We’ll get McCain or Giuliani. If it’s McCain, perhaps Huck is thinking he will be the vice presidential nominee.
“McCain-Huckabee.” Has a certain awful ring to it.
And if all of this happens, it will be because Huckabee ran and exploited (or at the very least willingly benefited from) religous bigotry. In 2008. In the United States of America.
John and I categorize posts here, and we select from a menu of choices. For this one I really had to choose only two categories: “Political Strategy” and “Religious Bigotry.” That combination alone says a lot about what is going on.
[The drawing atop this post is of Quakers being led to execution in Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s.]
John chimes in: Candidate motivations have always fascinated me, particularly those of candidates who have no real hope of winning. Of course, many are just deluding themselves, but I don’t read Huckabee as that kind of person; he is too shrewd. Which means, I, like Lowell, think he is playing for some prize other than the White House. I have speculated on that often in the last weeks. I have wondered privately if his motivation was not purely a desire to “stop the Mormon.” Within Huckabee’s flavor of creedal Christianity there are those who would be so ugly, and some of them obviously support him. But I have no idea if he is such a person or not.
But I agree with Lowell’s analysis that Huckabee’s only real role here is as a spoiler. It could be played out in a lot of ways, including brokering his delegates at the convention, which if he were really after the VP slot is how I would play it – that way he can get the slot with whomever the candidate ends up being.
Regardless, this much is undeniably true – Huckabee has provided shelter for anti-Mormon bigotry. Whether he personally is such or not, it is hard to say, but by refusing to repudiate it, by allowing it to thrive on his web site, he has let this malignant force act when it should be crushed. By doing so, he could, as Lowell fears, obtain his short term goal, whatever that may be.
But, when you harbor a dangerous animal in your garage, it will eventually attack you. McCain has been no friend to Evangelicals over the years. Could Huckabee be letting his ambition allow him to be hoodwinked into helping McCain crush the very movement he holds so dear, the movement that John McCain thinks hoodwinked him in 2000? THAT I would not put past John McCain.
Posted in Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry | 5 Comments » | 
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CarlH on 09 Jan 2008 at 2:52 pm #
Mark R. Levin had the same conclusion (and some very short consistent analysis) last night over at NRO’s The Corner:
kgbudge on 09 Jan 2008 at 3:57 pm #
I think there’s a real possibility Huckabee thinks Romney is literally the Antichrist. It would explain a lot about his campaign.
jgardner on 09 Jan 2008 at 7:20 pm #
Don’t contribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence. I don’t know that Huckabee would run a campaign solely to take out the mormon. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, however.)
I do know that Huckabee is a fool and he is perhaps expecting a miracle a la Red Sea or Pentecost.
He doesn’t see that by starving out more viable, socially conservative candidates that he will hurt his cause down the road. Perhaps the republican voters will come to their senses and see that a vote for Huckabee is a vote for Giuliani or McCain.
JLFuller on 09 Jan 2008 at 10:06 pm #
It is OK to attribute villainy to those who commit it but it is not OK when they use acceptable strategies. Huckabee teaming up with McCain to force out competitors is an acceptable strategy. It is fair play. Romney is responsible for the image he presents and if he has failed to coalesce the electorate behind him when he had a fair chance then so be it. What I have seen this last week has been fair. There has been no underground anti-Mormon campaign that I have seen or heard of. There will be in South Carolina however. But in the New Hampshire race I have not seen anything objectionable. It has not been unfair no matter how I wish there was a different outcome. We can see that Romney is genuinely disliked personally by the others in the race – maybe with some reason. No one said he had to be liked by everybody.
I have thought for a long time that he couldn’t take a punch. These nasty comments during the debates leave him looking like somebody just stole his lunch money. I don’t think he has the ability to drag up some crankiness on demand or make somebody feel bad about who they are and how they fit into society. It isn’t hard but you can’t be afraid of taking a whack in the chops. A second job as a bouncer in a cowboy bar or maybe a stint in the armed service or as a cop or a job in a penitentiary would have helped develop some street survival skills. Anyway, hold McCain and Huckabee accountable for misdeeds, but not for something they didn’t do wrong.
HaroldHutchison on 10 Jan 2008 at 6:08 am #
If it’s Giuliani, I can more than live with that, particularly given the tax cut he proposed and what he did in New York City. I can even live with McCain, who backed the surge before the surge was cool (I do not think he and Huckabee are tag-teaming Romney).
I don’t mind Mitt losing if the other guy has a better resume (which is arguably the case with Giuliani) or if another guy managed to be very right about one of the big issues this country is facing (McCain). But I think I should have the right to be ticked off if Romney loses to a guy who relied on the politics of religious identity to overcome a really bad resume and track record.