Cleaning Up From The VVS
Yeah, it is still being talked about. In terms of 2012 it does not mean much. It is important in terms of religiously motivated political action, but not really the election. I’m kinda with the Christian Science Monitor Vote blog:
If the adrenalin isn’t pulsating through your body this morning with news of the results at the Values Voter Summit, you’re not alone. The Washington Huskies beat USC yesterday. Now that’s news. Florida State upended BYU — blew ‘em out. Wow. Virginia Tech topped Nebraska in the last minute of the game. Now that’s exciting.
But that does not keep CNSNews (formerly the Christian News Service) from trying to give the Huckster a leg up out of the thing. (Oooh – there’s a surprise – where Joel Belz when you need him?)
Poligazette has the videos of Romney’s entire speech, which The Hill’s Pundits Blog seemed to like very well.
Jennifer Rubins at the Contentions blog points out that while in Washington, Romney made some far more substantive appearances than the VVS – like lunch at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Former governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the lunch speaker at the Foreign Policy Initiative conference. In a conversational interview with FPI board member Dan Senor, he appeared more relaxed and fluent than he had on the campaign trail. Without a fixed script (or any notes), he was able to demonstrate some impressive grasp of details while setting forth his big-picture critique of the Obama foreign policy. He gave credit to the president for his willingness to stick to a winning strategy in Iraq and for not “yanking all the troops out,” as he had promised during the campaign. But that is where his praise ended.
The perspective after a Sunday and Monday to digest the VVS is that it is, being nice, “political theater,” not being nice, “a freak show.” Serious people give it a bit of a head nod and then they move on to stuff that matters. As I said, by voting for the Huckster, they cast themselves into political irrelevance – or more directly, a political ghetto. Indeed, it helped build momentum for the spoiler in ’08, but that is all it did – SPOIL.
So what happens when you spoil a sauce you are making? Well you start over and this time you do not include the ingredient that caused the spoilage. That is the risk that Evangelicals run by continuing to back the Huckster, not being included in the ’12 mix.
Not only is this perspective true from conservative punditry, but also from those on the left who bothered to attack Romney afterwards, not the Huckster. The Boston Globe dutifully passes on the DNC’s shot at Romney after his FOXNews talking head appearance Sunday morning as a “flip-flopper.” One of the Reuters blogs is so blatant in its DNC messenger efforts that its almost funny. There is some irony and comedy in these attacks. Irony in that they brought out the long knives for the straw poll loser. Comedy in the use of a charge from the last cycle – they should be smarter than that.
Or maybe they are – maybe they know what we have known all along. Romney is the real competition, not the Huckster. But the Huckster can spoil, which opens doors for them. The spoilage falls out of the religion issue and the flip-flop charge resonates in light of the “Mormons lie” meme. So maybe, just maybe this attack was timed to perfection to maximize its affect after the VVS. And the voters at the VVS fell right into their hands and the Huckster is their tool.
Maybe we are the ones that should be smarter than that.
Lowell adds: It will be interesting to see how the “flip-flopper” attack plays out in 2012, when we will be talking about Romney deviating from positions he took in 1994 – 18 years earlier. If Joel Belz and his ilk want to make something of that in the context of Mormons being liars, they’ll look even more ridiculous than they do already.
In fact, that is what the Values Voters activists who voted for Huckabee need to think about the most: How ridiculous do they want to look? And, let us remember that only one-third of the attendees at that conference actually voted in the straw poll. What we are seeing are the wishes of the hard-core activists. Will everyone else allow themselves to be led by that group? We shall see.
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PoliGazette » Huckabee and Romney on 22 Sep 2009 at 2:01 pm #
[...] VI blog published an interesting post about Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. To summarize, Huckabee is portrayed as the big spoiler of 2008 [...]