Article VI Blog

This blog is about the intersection between politics and religion, and when Michael Barone in NRO starts talking about that subject I think we need to pay attention. Barone says South Carolina is not as critical to determining the nominee as it once was, but that the state did “set the stage” for the remainder of the campaign. Barone fleshes that theory out in the context of Huckabee and his attempt to run an Evangelical-based campaign:

Huckabee’s defeat in South Carolina seems to remove him as a major contender. He has won many votes from evangelical and born-again Christians, but except in the Iowa caucuses he has not won big majorities in the group and has won only about ten percent of the votes of other Republicans.

He doesn’t have the money to run much in the way of ads in Florida. This means that we’re unlikely to see a confrontation between Huckabee and one other candidate, between someone closely identified with evangelicals and one who is not. The result: The winner of the primary will not be seen as having disrespected a core constituency of the party.

(Emphasis added.)

Ramesh Ponnuru gets into that same subject in much more depth, and writes about the future of “Huckabism.” He argues that although Huck’s presidential campaign is doomed, other Republicans need to treat Huck’s supporters with care and respect. You really must read the whole thing, but these excerpts may whet your appetite:

The Huckabee campaign has faced a series of cruel binds from the start. Forming a sizable evangelical base was probably the only way for him to become a factor in the campaign. But his particularistic appeal also guaranteed that he would not win the nomination. There are enough evangelical Republicans for a candidate to be tempted to adopt a strategy of building out from an evangelical base. But there are not enough of them for it to work. For one thing, many evangelicals will not respond to such an appeal. Some of them will find it insulting. Some of them will harbor disagreements with the candidate and will not subordinate those disagreements to their shared religion. Some of them will decide — correctly — that he cannot win the nomination or the general election. Many of the leaders of evangelical conservative organizations have pointedly refused to support the Huckabee campaign. Huckabee enthusiasts, particularly the young ones, tend to think that these leaders have sold out. The leaders think they are too seasoned to make a young enthusiast’s mistake. . . .

Huckabee may not be the last candidate to try this strategy. It is, for one thing, a hopeless strategy only if the goal is to win the Republican nomination. It is a much more promising route to becoming a big shot in national politics. As a result of this campaign, Huckabee is already the most prominent evangelical political figure of his generation.

The upside for Republicans is that campaigns such as Huckabee’s can bring new, young activists into the party. The history of such campaigns suggests that activists, as they get seasoned, become more realistic about how to influence politics. A lot of those evangelical leaders who have given the cold shoulder to Huckabee probably have Robertson ’88 buttons somewhere in their attics.

The downside is that such campaigns can leave bitterness in their wake. If a lot of Huckabee’s evangelical supporters conclude that the party, in rejecting him, is also rejecting them, then the damage will be lasting.

(Emphasis added.) I think Ramesh is right. Obviously, so does Mitt Romney, who has clearly seen Evangelicals as allies he must have, even if not as many have warmed to him (yet) as he would have liked.

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