Okay, he isn’t saying that exactly, but he does seem to be one of the few columnists or radio hosts who recognises that there is something awry with the persistent demonisation of Huckabee and McCain when compared to the much more friendly treatment meted out to Romney and Giuliani, who are, by any fair standard judging by their records, far less conservative than the two receving the third degree from pundits, activists and talk radio hosts. If the phrase “pro-war liberal” applies to anyone in the race, it is Giuliani, yet he typically gets a pass from the people who would try to persuade you that Huckabee wants something like “socialism in one nation under God.” There is no doubt, as I have noted before, that the majority view of Huckabee in particular is that of someone who is seriously conservative, and Republicans likewise identify with Huckabee and McCain as people who “share their values” far more than Romney or Giuliani. That Huckabee has not been noticeably more conservative than the President over the years and yet receives the highest rating as a conservative by Republicans should tell you something about cognitive dissonance among GOP voters, who claim in poll after poll around the country that they want someone like Reagan and not like Bush and are, according to national and Feb. 5 state polling, nonetheless happily embracing the two candidates who seem like natural heirs to a Bush-dominated GOP.
Now by the standards of what I would recognise as conservatism, all of the four are badly wanting, none can really be trusted and all are deeply in the wrong on foreign policy to different degrees, but I am keenly aware that the standards I use are definitely not the prevailing ones in the GOP today and haven’t been for some time. It was simply impossible for the GOP and the movement to tie themselves so closely to Bush, to rally core constituencies to his side time after time and to identify many of his worst policies (e.g., “the freedom agenda”) as their guiding principles and then suddenly reverse the effects of the last seven years on the attitudes of the voters who had been stampeded into the Bush corral. The Republicans who say they want a Reagan-like leader and don’t think Bush is cut from the same cloth nonetheless approve of the President’s performance in approximately the same percentages as embrace Huckabee and McCain. There may not be complete identification between Bush supporters and Huckabee/McCain supporters (McCain seems to have the backing of a remarkable number of anti-Bush voters), but if two-thirds of the GOP still back Bush how is it so remarkable that two-thirds would also back Huckabee and/or McCain?
It seems more certain than ever that Ross was right when he wrote:
If you consider how the nation’s most ambitious Republicans are positioning themselves for 2008, Bushism looks like it could have surprising staying power.
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Koz
I don’t listen to Medved that often but I heard for a moment or two on the radio a couple of weeks ago. His thesis was that the dislike of Huck from conservatives was basically religious bias. On that score, I don’t think he has much of a case.
A bigger problem is that he opposes property rights and low taxes, and does so in a particularly facile way. His second problem is his ethically mixed record as governor of Arkansas. After that, some people are uncomfortable with such a strong religious figure as a secular leader. But imo, that’s the least of his problems.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Daniel Larison
I agree that Medved’s assessment of why others are opposed to Huckabee gets things quite wrong in that case. He also doesn’t seem to understand why people like Huckabee. I heard him a couple weeks ago, just after Iowa, declaring that Huckabee did *not* win because of evangelicals, and that the “evangelicals for Huckabee” story was just a media distortion. Clearly, he has some odd interpretations, which are informed by his own focus on defending religious conservatives against unfair portrayals in the media.
Huckabee’s fiscal record is very good cause for concern, and the ethics charges against him are serious. What has struck me about the response to this is not that Huckabee is being attacked frequently and justly for what he has actually done, but that others who have pursued policies or have personal peccadilloes just as troubling as Huckabee’s are granted much more leniency. His meaningless rhetoric about Main Street is also taken far too seriously and turned into an entire economic program that it simply will never be. What makes this difference in treatment most striking is how unlike the voter reaction it is. I still think that part of his argument is right and the important thing to take away here.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
OldNewEngland
Er, Giuliani is a “pro-war liberal”? Really? He’s a social moderate, a law and order type with a Catholic intolerance for public obscenity, and a near flawless record of fiscal conservatism. A pro-war classical liberal, maybe.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Koz
I dunno, Quin Hillyer has been pushing “Sticky-fingers Huckabee” angle for a while now, but he’s about the only one. I don’t think he’s been criticized too harshly for that in relation to the other candidates.
I confess I’m not following the rest of your argument.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
MuteNostrilAgony
You’ve commented elsewhere, Dan, on the similarities between Al Gore 2000 and Mitt Romney ‘08. However, there’s a telling parallel between Gore and Mike Huckabee too.
The denunciations by Republican elites of Huckabee’s populism are as selective and over-the-top as you say, but Democrat elites did much the same to Gore. To this day Al From, the DLC, and neoliberal pundits like Joe Klein remain absolutely convinced that Gore lost because he ran a populist campaign.
How the pro-free trade and pro-immigration Gore qualifies as a “populist” is never explained. Oh, right, his acceptance speech contained some hot air about “the people versus the powerful.” (This rhetorical phase lasted maybe four days, then Gore dropped it the rest of the campaign.)
The most vague or meaningless anti-Wall Street or anti-globalization rhetoric is enough to drive the movers and shakers in both parties into spasms of outrage against a candidate. That tells you where their priorities really lie, and it may also explain much of the dysfunction in the American political system in recent years.
P.S. As mayor of New York, Giuliani was an outspoken proponent of rent control. He always stood in the way of his fellow Republicans, up to and including Governor Pataki, who were trying to abolish or reform it. Funny how conservative pundits rarely complain about that.