Is Huckabee Out to “Stop the Mormon?”
My short answer to the question above is, I really don’t think so, but I could well be wrong. I know John has his own deep suspicions in this regard. Here’s my view.
On the one hand, Huckabee reportedly comes from a fairly moderate strain of Southern Baptist belief. As such, he may not buy into Al Mohler’s “anguish” over whether he has a duty of Christian discipleship not to vote for a Mormon presidential candidate, lest he contribute to the “mainstreaming” of Mormonism that would result if a Mormon is actually elected.
On the other hand, there are Huck’s cunning question to the New York Times about whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan being brothers, his very slippery answers on whether he thinks Mormonism is a cult, and so forth. Perhaps more important, there is his insistence on staying in the race even as it becomes clear that he cannot pull votes from any group other than Evangelicals. John Fund lays out that evidence today.
On yet another hand, there is the matter of personal ambition. Religious motives aside, Huck may simply want the vice presidential spot with McCain. After all, if McCain wins the nomination, he will owe much of his success to Huckabee siphoning off just enough social conservative votes to enable McCain to defeat Romney. Jonathan Martin writes:
“It’s like having an extra man on the field,” said neutral Republican strategist Greg Mueller, borrowing a timely football analogy. “The fact that this has not gotten down to two or even three people has helped McCain immensely. The more the other candidates stay in the race, the more they keep harvesting votes from each other.”
“It’s pure mathematics,” observed GOP consultant Chris LaCivita, who is also uncommitted in the race. “You’ve got three competing for one group and one competing for the other,” he said of the split competition for conservatives and McCain’s sole claim on moderates.
Vote-crunching aside, is there a deal already between Huck and McCain? It sure looks that way. It’s obvious to all observers that Huckabee will not say anything critical of McCain (and vice versa). If you really think that is simply the result of mutual admiration, then you’re a lot more trusting of politicians’ human nature than I am. Jonathan Martin has more about this in his piece today, “Huckabee: McCain-lover, Mitt-killer.”
(Some have suggested that in order to keep McCain from benefiting from a split in values voters, Romney should reach out to Huckabee and offer the vice presidential slot. A startling idea, I think. I offer some political thoughts about that elsewhere.)
Now, if Huckabee does take Romney out of the way for McCain, that result will give satisfaction to those Evangelicals who dislike Romney because of his religion or who share Mohler’s discomfort over Mormons being “mainstreamed” by one of them getting elected president.
But it doesn’t mean Huck’s dislike for Mitt is based on religious animus. As Martin argues:
Huckabee and his aides have barely disguised their disdain for Romney, whose chameleon-like stance on issues and free-spending negative ad campaign have made him the most unpopular candidate among his GOP rivals.
Still, I wonder: Do those purely political differences really explain that level of disdain?
John?
John’s thoughts: I agree with the analysis that Huck can accomplish little in this race other than keep Romney from winning. The question is why.
I doubt seriously that Huckabee would admit, even in a perfectly secure conversation with a friend, that anti-Mormon animus motivates him, but after SC it should be clear to all but the delusional that he cannot win. That makes his motives suspect.
A significant portion of his supporters certainly bear an anti-Mormon animus and the others have faith and “branding” confused. I have little doubt that many that are whispering in his ear to continue are motivated by bias and bigotry.
At this point the question is largely psychological. As humans we are quite capable of deluding ourselves. For every person that admitted in last Friday’s polling data that “flip-flop” is code for “Mormon,” I would bet there is another someone for which that is true, but that has simply, psychologically cut themselves off from the connection. Another way to look at this is that the “big lie” is something we often tell ourselves. I know some Huck supporters for whom this is true, and I would make it even money this is the category Huck falls into as well.
This means that Huck would likely spit in the face of a VP bid from Romney.
As to a McCain-Huck deal? Possible, but no way to know. A mutual disdain for Romney could explain their behavior without a deal. We know McCain’s mother is a bigot so it is quite possible that he is in that self-delusional state that I am betting Huck is in. Psychologically, that could explain all this without political machinations.
The question is what should Romney do? Run hard and be an example. If there is a deal, Romney cannot do anything about it now but campaign smarter and beat them anyway. If there is no deal and they are motivated darkly, if unrealizingly, again, there is nothing Romney can do but run hard and win.
It must be remembered that Romney is winning. People can spin this however they want. When it is all said and done it comes down to delegates, and Romney is winning those. If the convention is brokered, Romney has more inside connections than anyone else, again, advantage Romney. Hard work, smarts, and skill win in the end. It is those things that beat racial bigotry and they will here too.
[Note: We recognize that this post includes more politics than is customary for this blog, but in a year when the political and the religious are so intertwined, it's often impossible to avoid that.]
Posted in Political Strategy, Religious Bigotry | 3 Comments » | 
Print this post
| 
Email This Post
coltakashi on 21 Jan 2008 at 3:53 pm #
I don’t think there needs to be an explicit agreement between McCain and Huckabee. This is more of a game theory moment.
McCain fights Romney over national security issues and business issues. Huckabee competes with Romney over social conservative issues. McCain and Huckabee appeal to largely different customer bases. They both know this.
People who vote for Huckabee on religion would not vote for McCain–remember McCain’s attack on Evangelicals after his loss in South Caroline in 2000. (Is this a flip-flop by McCain?) People who vote for McCain on national security issues would hardly vote for Huckabee, who has no international or military experience. McCain knows that Huckabee is not making a dent in the economic conservatives, since Huckabee is actually more liberal than McCain there. So Huckabee hardly hurts McCain, while he draws many “values voters” away from Romney.
As demonstrated in New Hampshire, since the “winner” title is awarded on the basis of pluralities rather than majorities, McCain is happy because Huckabee wears down Romney’s support just enough to give him a 5% margin.
The real mystery is not why McCain likes Huckabee in the race, but rather why Huckabee stays in the race when he clearly cannot “win” a lot more states and he is actually helping McCain more than himself to get the nomination.
One reason may be that Huckabee believes in miracles. After all, many Democrats bowed out of the 1992 elections when Bush 41 had a 90% approval rating after Desert Storm. Bill Clinton hung on, and took advantage of the accident of the economic downturn. Who knows what events might turn things in Huckabee’s favor?
Second, Huckabee’s campaign depends a lot on use of the resources of churches and pastors. Apparently this in-kind aid has not been barred by McCain-Feingold, just as it does not bar Oprah Winfrey from using her celebrity to make a multi-million dollar in-kind donation of her endorsement. Competing as the underdog probably elicits just as much support as it discourages. Huckabee thinks he can go along running a low cost campaign, relying on each effort to raise just enough funds to finance the next stage. Although how he applies that to the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday in 21 states is hard to see. I assume that, since he knows he only has a shot where Evangelicals are most dominant, he will concentrate on Southern states and forget the rest, such as Utah, where he might get 1%.
Third, Huckabee might feel, as some have speculated about John Edwards, that even at a poor 3rd in the primaries, the delegates he collects could be the difference between either Romney or McCain having a majority or being forced to dicker with Huckabee to win it. He can hold out for Vice President or something else. If you get enough prominence, you can celebrity into a money-making machine. I can’t think of any reason for McCain to not offer him the VP job in return for his delegates, except for what I believe is McCain’s secret master stroke for securing independent but pro-war on terrorism voters, by naming Joe Lieberman as his VP.
While political bedfellows are often strange–witness Johnson as Kennedy’s running mate–there are real reasons why people entertain the notion that Johnson was complicit in Kennedy’s assassination. At the very least, if the VP hates you and has no real political loyalty to you, when the press starts attacking you, it is not helpful to have someone who directly benefits from your fall being on “your team.” Recall that Huckabee came into office as Governor in Arkansas by leading what some viewed as a “coup” against the convicted Jim Guy Tucker. I would have a hard time swallowing Romney lining up with Huckabee, without a lot of actions by Huckabee that undercut his status as the attack dog of Evangelicalism against Mormon heresy, such as attending a Mormon Sunday service with Romney and vice versa, with similar positive statements all around by each candidate about the other’s church.
So, it appears to me that Huckabee has no hope of getting the nomination barring an “act of God”–like Romney being killed in a mid-air collision–but he has settled into a rhythm where he has found a cheap way of campaigning that can finance itself enough to give him the 10% of the delegates that might put him in the catbird seat at a convention where both Romney and McCain are just shy of a majority. He would be the obstacle to a majority that Ross Perot was for Bush 41. And he can brag to his base about how he stopped the evil Romney from being President. He would do it without using the term “Mormon”, but he will use substitutes that his followers understand, like “flip-flopping” and “lacking integrity” or even not being “intelligent” or being too “slick” or “rich”.
So Huckabee does not need to really resent Mormons in order to be motivated against Romney. My own estimate is that he is more vain than religious in this race. He is using–in my view cynically–his fellow Evangelicals to give him a boost into national political prominence, even though any attempt on his part to enact the portion of an Evangelical-oriented conservative social agenda that Republicans like Bush are not already committed to would be doomed to failure, especially against a Democratic majority in Congress. The expectations of Huckabee supporters are Messianic in their terminology, exactly the kind of thing that critics of Romney’s Mormonism accuse him of, without evidence. The real Mormon view is much more sober, since it is an individual evaluation rather than one driven in any way by their church leaders. Huckabee will just blame the forces of Satan for his losses and frustrations, implicitly criticizing Evangelicals and Catholics in Michigan, and Mormons in Nevada, for Romney’s successes. So the bottom line is that Huckabee, who started with no political capital to speak of, cannot lose in the long run. He can parlay his exposure into a national cable TV network (which is where his business experience is) and internet spin-offs, the “Take America back for Jesus” channel, and make himself a king-maker in the political realm as a self-appointed spokesman for Evangelical voters.
kgbudge on 22 Jan 2008 at 11:56 am #
Short thought for the day:
It can credibly be speculated that Huckabee is in the race to improve his standing with his coreligionists. You’ve so speculated, and you’re not the only ones.
No one has speculated that Romney is in the race to improve his standing with his coreligionists. That idea is too risible. Lowell can expostulate further on why that’s so, but it’s not just the fact that Romney has always had a serious shot at the nomination.
I don’t think this bodes well for Evangelicals.
I808 on 23 Jan 2008 at 12:39 am #
As an E-vangelical voter, I have been a Romney backer from the start of this horse race. Right now, the best strategy I could imagine for the Romney camp would be to team up with Rudy. The conservatives’ concern with national security would easily override any anti-Mormon bias and the addition of Rudy’s moderate supporters would make a winning team against the anti-war crowds in the general election.
I took a look at Huck after some good performances in the early debates even though he had so little money to through into the fight, but so many liberal sounding ‘gaffs’ (or are they really thought out stances on the issues?) had me rejecting his candidacy as soon as I turned my attention his way.
I am strongly anti-McCain for the history of compromising conservative principals at only the critical votes. This is why he can claim an 80% conservative voting record and still have conservatives so angry at him. That ’straight talk’ reputation tastes more like back stabbing than a realistic view of the issues. Reaching across the aisle shouldn’t mean moving to the other side. McCain-Feingold is a fein example of what I’m referring to. The torture definition is another example. Scaring prisoners is not the same as damaging or harming prisoners, and making the practice so public essentially made the practice ineffective.
I get a feel for the common voters’ leanings by talking to my Evangelical family who have very little interest in Politics. My sister, who knows nothing of voting records or political strengths and tactics, supports Huck. She relies on the familiarity of our faith to feel a connection with him. My nephews probably won’t even vote. My brothers will not even bother to watch news reports on the political race. They are looking at McCain because the press favor him and so he gets a positive look in every blurp on the TV. (You can’t avoid the coverage completely unless you live under a rock) I don’t see how McCain can carry the R to the White House. I believe, if he gets the nod, Hillary will be the next pres.
One of my clients gave me an e-mail circular with a definition for Electile Dysfunction: The inablility to become aroused over any of the choices for election year.
http://judgeright.blogspot.com