Huckabee Changes Message
Now that the Huckabee campaign is moving on to other states, more specifically New Hampshire, the former preacher-turned-Governor-turned-presidential-candidate has decided to change his message somewhat.
In Iowa he campaigned on him being a Christian Leader. That went well over in Iowa, but New Hampshire Republicans are less fond of overly religious rhetoric, which is why Huckabee has dropped religion a bit and is emphasizing other things.
As we all know, he ran television commercials flashing the words “Christian leader” in Iowa, which quite obviously worked in that religious state. The ad he’s running in New Hampshire, however, has been altered somewhat: in his ads running in Iowa he’s no longer described as a “Christian leader” but, instead, as an “authentic conservative” (which is hilarious) and a “proven leader.”
Not only that, he isn’t talking about same-sex marriage and abortion when in Granite State. Instead, he heaps “praise on the 10th Amendment to the Constitution as a monument to federalism and states’ rights. And he added some new details to his usual pledge to improve education, talking about the importance of paying teachers more in exchange for improved performance”; issues that New Hampshire Republicans care more about.
Ed Rollins, who’s Huckabee Karl Rove, said that the governor hopes to finish third in New Hampshire, which would keep the momentum going and, they hope, result in a good finish in both Florida and South Carolina. Rollins hates Mitt Romney – a few days ago he said that he wants to knock Romney’s teeth out – and said (in awkward use of the English language) that “we are going to see if we can’t take Romney out.”
The way they’re going to do that? “He suggested that Mr. Huckabee would present a comparison of two governors — one who improved services and infrastructure over 10 years in Arkansas, the other who spent the last year of his one term in Massachusetts traveling to lay the groundwork for a presidential run,” which is very much unlike Huckabee of course, since he only decided to run for president after he received a revelation in 2007.
That’s a bit snarky, but you get the point: every single presidential candidate has planned his or her run for years, and every single candidate – except for Fred Thompson perhaps – is overly ambitious and arrogant.
Anyway, although he’s talking less about religion and religious issues in New Hampshire, he’s still playing the populist card: “People in my own party talk about how this economy is terrific, and for some folks it is,” he told a crowd Henniker, NH. “I probably come from the same kind of place you do. I understand struggle.”
Will this go over well with NH Republicans? Will he be able to finish third (if so, that’s indeed good enough for him)? Or did NH conservatives follow the race in Iowa closely and did Huckabee turn them off? According to the latest polls, he’s in fourth place, but only 0.5% behind Rudy Giuliani. Now that he has the momentum going, it’s quite likely that he’ll overtake the former mayor of New York I’d say.
If you look at these stats at Rasmussen it’s fascinating to see that Huckabee and Romney seem to appeal to basically the exact same base(s). The numbers for Huckabee are:
Conservative: 43%
Moderate: 24%
Liberal: 9%
And for Romney:
Conservative: 42%
Moderate: 28%
Liberal: 8%
As you can see, they’re almost exactly the same. Even the fav/ unfav ratings mirror each other:
Huckabee: 40% / 47%
Romney: 38% / 51%
(the only candidate with a positive score on the Republican side, by the way, is John McCain: 53% / 37%. He’s also the only who beats Obama in a match-up)
Will Huckabee last until Feb. 5, or will he drop out before Super Tuesday? I know that some people think that he’ll drop out soon, but if he does reasonably well in NH and does very well in South Carolina and Florida – which is very possible – I don’t quite see him dropping out before D-Day. No, if his new strategy works in NH, he’ll have proven that he can change his message and can appeal to more voters than initially anticipated.
I just want to make the point that the Republican search for a ‘true conservative’ has become a little obsessive and misguided. When the GOP took over the Congress in 1994, it wasn’t because of its supply-sider Reagan wing, headed by people like Jack Kemp–who, by the way, helped Dole lose the 1996 election—but because of its deficit hawk wing, and a moderate, big tent approach to politics. In 1994, the Republican Party was seen as more moderate than the Democratic Party. And if in 2008 the Democratic Party will be seen as more moderate, they will win. On these grounds the focus by some on how Huckabee is "not a conservative" is a little funny. I’ve seen Republicans complain that Huckabee is a liberal on economic issues. In fact he still leans conservative, he’s a moderate conservative. He brokered a deal with his Democratic legislature to raise taxes, because his state was undergoing a budget crisis. The Republican party also has a large base of paleo-conservatives who are against agreements like NAFTA, and think free traders, the neo-conservatives, aren’t "true conservatives" at all.
Those are valid points, redfish, but then again, this isn’t 1994. I think it’s doubtful that the Reagan Democrats will be voting GOP no matter who the party puts up this time. The moderates just aren’t really in play at this point, but I think that fact also leads to the conclusion that Huckabee shouldn’t be feared but actually embraced at least as the VP (which basically means putting McCain forward because he’s the best-maybe the only- match for Huckabee.) I say this because if the center is all going to the left and voting Dem, then the GOP’s only chance will be to continue the Rove strategy of shoring up the religious right wing. The fact that Huckabee and McCain would also garner some of the centrist votes would be an added benefit.
BTW, I meant to add two things: one, I know that 1994 was not the Reagan revolution year but I presume that the same demographic that put Reagan in office was what propelled the GOP to take Congress in ‘94. And two, the intraparty squabbles and demands for purity are pretty normal, and occur on both sides of the aisle. After losing elections, they tend to become magnified because each faction within the party blames the others for the losses and tries to use the time of regrouping to purge those that they see as ‘heretics’.
C Stanley, a lot of people who supported Reagan were moderates, like you said, Reagan Democrats, who were mainly moderates, I think because conservative politics had moved more towards the center than liberal politics, the so-called big tent. But actually I think the ‘94 GOP revolution, more than a continuation of Reganism, was riding on the coattails of Ross Perot’s 1992 run. In fact, the Contract with America, on many of its main points, was a copy of a checklist Perot created for his 92 race; and Perot went to the point of encouraging voters to elect a Republican congress in 94 to give them a chance at changing things.
If you look narrowly at those grounds, Huckabee on economic issues would not be disliked by Perot voters. Huckabee’s main problems nationally are not his positions on economic issues, but his apparent religious bent on social issues, and persistent questions of corruption, which may or may not be fair. A lot of voters I think actually agree with Huckabee on social issues, but the fact that he has sometimes put religious spin and rhetoric on them will make him a big target in the ‘culture wars’, and every statement of his will be magnified and nitpicked like they have been so far. I think these social issues are in fact driving America’s polarization more than the war is.
On that, he can only rely on using his charm and answering questions well. He also has some criticisms on his ethics when he was in office, which he might not be able to overcome, either.
The McCain-Huckabee teamup actually makes sense, and they according to reports are somewhat working together to get Romney out of the race. McCain himself I think has bigger problems as a candidate than people realize. His high favorability is due to years of media recognition as a maverick (to which people liked him, not disliked him, for campaign finance bills). But he was always sort of a hack on that issue, and he I think generally is. I don’t think he performs well in debates, and I think if McCain were debating Obama or Hillary he would be in trouble, and his polling would go down.
Anyway, looking at all of this, I think its true that the Republicans have to figure out what they’re going to do, because Democrats have an advantage in the race.
I suspect that Republicans like everyone else are capable of misinterpreting history. Democrats and the mainstream media tried to spin the movement against gay marriage as something the Republicans created as a wedge issue, and some Republicans may have believed that hype, and may believe they can win by starting a culture war.
It should be obvious if you look at a timeline of the development of the issue, that it started with gay rights activists filing lawsuits, which started a backlash, which was then whipped up to a frenzy not by Republican extremists but by gay rights extremists and their 24/7 nationwide gay marriage TV marathon.
In other words, Republicans weren’t leading by starting a culture war. Democrats were losing by starting the culture war. If Republicans had started it, they would have been the ones that lost. This is obvious from watching the evolution of the GOP platform. It wasn’t until the GOP shut up their extremist elements that they started winning, while at the same time the Clinton administration was letting their extremist elements have a party. The result was 1994. The situation is not permenant, and the Republican advantage can go away just as quickly as it came if we let the extremists in our party take charge again.
Jeff,
Well its bizarre that people think right-wing elements started any fight on cultural issues in the first place, when these battles started in the 70s because of liberal activists trying to change laws. When they say the right-wing is dividing America, I guess they believe that their politics are obvious and enlightened and everyone would have fallen in line with them in the 1970s if not for some shadowy entrenched interests of rednecks confusing their minds.
There was a bizarre paranoid mentality after 9/11 happened, where before anyone accused anyone of being anti-American, Democrats started talking about how they were being accused of being anti-American for dissenting. Only after a while where some political elements had a knee jerk reaction to believe every complaint against America was true, did the label actually stick.
Thats the problem with the message of Howard Dean in 2004 and the message of Obama and Edwards in 2008. America does want change, to move to reform government, and get rid of partisanship. But when Howard Dean would say "Republicans are evil, they’re the ones dividing us" he was remarkably blind to the irony of saying that. When Edwards or Obama says "We’ll win back the country for America", apparently they make the equation in their minds America = Democrats. Sure, we’re One America, but vote for Democrats. (or as Edwards would say, we’re Two Americas). The majority of Americans would want Edwards to stand up to special interests, but may not agree with his health care plans. The corruption in Congress is also a corruption of Democrats as well as Republicans. Maybe if Edwards would bring up the fact that Clinton was the subject of campaign finance hearings where several people admitted to buying support, he could make his point sharper, but he wouldn’t. The scary thing about a lot of liberals is they believe they’re moderates, but they’re not. Perhaps the closest thing you can say about conservatives, is they believe most Americans are conservatives, when they’re not.