Recently in Huckabee Category

What happened in South Carolina is really pretty simple. The Mormon Gap killed Mitt Romney. Defined as the percentage-point difference between the evangelical and the non-evangelical vote for a given Mormon candidate in a Republican primary, it turned out to be 16 points; i.e. Romney won 38 percent of non-evangelicals but only 22 percent of evangelicals. By contrast, Newt Gingrich won 44 percent of evangelicals, as opposed to only 33 percent of non-evangelicals.

In other words, had evangelicals voted like non-evangelicals, Romney would have won the primary, 38 percent to 33 percent. But since fully 65 percent of GOP primary voters counted themselves as evangelical, he lost, 28 percent to 40 percent. And lest anyone think that Gingrich, the Catholic convert, can't be the Huckabee of 2012, be it noted that Newt actually did a point better among evangelicals in the Palmetto State than Mike did in 2008. 

Update: This blog has joined forces with the Religion News Service and is now sailing under their banner at http://www.religionnews.com/blogs/mark-silk. What happened in SC seems to be happening in Florida.

Amidst all the hand-wringing about the state of the Republican presidential field, one potential candidate seems to be sailing blithely along--undeclared, familiar, discounted, and atop the polls. It's Mike Huckabee, of course.

Here's how January looks for him. He's well ahead in Iowa, where he won the caucuses in 2008. He's comfortably in the group behind Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, where he finished a poor third in 2008. He's tied for the lead in Florida, where he also got walloped in 2008. And while no one has polled South Carolina Republicans lately, he finished a close second to John McCain last time they voted in a presidential primary. 

Nationally, Huck is maintaining his slight lead over all other candidates--and is the only one of the top candidates to improve his standing since the emergence of Donald the Reformed Gambling Impresario. Among Republicans, he's got by far the highest favorable rating.  As noted in this space earlier, he appears to have calmed the nerves of Catholic voters, who stayed away from him in droves in 2008. And in the electorate at large, he matches up well against Obama.

At the moment, the onetime Southern Baptist pastor is letting the loonies make the big noise, while doing his own nice guy act on Fox and the Daily Show. He's a clever politician who knows that the Republican establishment doesn't much care for him. I'd say he's laying back in the weeds, waiting to be anointed as the GOP's last best hope.

According to the latest WaPo/ABC poll, Mike Huckabee is the top choice for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Mitt Romney is a close second. The Post's lede this morning is that Sarah Palin's numbers among Republicans are heading south, which is a good story. But I've yet to see Beltway political scribes giving Huck serious attention this time around, much less talk about the prospects of a two-man race between Huck and Mitt. The CW is that it's got to be someone else, since both Huck and Mitt are 2008 stories.

To the contrary, I'd say the story at this point is the candidate of the evangelical base against the candidate of the GOP establishment. The wedge between them? Sharia. Huck has been one of the loudest voices in the GOP anti-Islam chorus. Mitt, a member of a minority faith that suffered profoundly at the hands of American Protestant bigots, has studiously stayed away from Muslim bashing--and, indeed, has drawn some right-wing flak for it. Huckabee's played the religion card against Romney before. Don't be surprised if he does it again. As in: "Governor, do you support proposed legislation in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming, etc. to ban Sharia law?"

Gallup's new portrait of GOP presidential candidate preferences by issue preference displays some moderately interesting features. Among frontrunners Huckabee, Romney, and Palin, Huckabee is the choice of social conservatives; Romney, of economic conservatives; and Palin, of foreign policy conservatives. Mostly the differences are not great but a couple stand out. Huckabee is weak with those Republicans who care most about business. And Romney is very weak with the moral values crowd, who prefer Huckabee to him by a 4-1 margin. In other words, the two stand exactly where they were last presidential cycle.

As of today, 31 percent of GOP voters think business/economic issues are the most important, compared with 17 percent who think moral/social issues are. If the economy continues to improve, the gap should narrow--which is good news for Huck, and bad for Mitt.

The quality of Gov. Mike Huckabee's mercy was not strained. It dropped like a gentle rain from heaven, upon just about any convicted felon who claimed to have found his way to Jesus. This was well known among the incarcerated class in Arkansas and so, it seems, more than the usual number of felons included Jesus in their commutation pleas. That's the well attested old story recapitulated by WaPo religion editor David Waters over on Under God.

Meanwhile, on the schadenfreude front, NYT on-line columnist Timothy Egan lays into Huckabee and his current employer, Roger Ailes, who gleefully hung Michael Dukakis out to dry for once having pardoned a rapist named Willie Horton. On Mr. Ailes' news network, Huck's exoneration by Bill (("you're a stand-up guy") O'Reilly is, indeed, a wonder to behold: Huck innocent, Washington State judges, guilty. Mercy, mercy.

For all this, the Maurice Clemmons case (now brought to a bloody end) points to the fact that Mike Huckabee used to be a much more interesting public figure than he is now. Something like a bona fide compassionate conservative, he was, as governor of Arkansas, notably soft on illegal immigrants, did not scruple to needle the Club for Growth as the "Club for Greed," and, well, acted on the belief that criminals could actually be rehabilitated. For his pains he was, briefly, lionized by the liberal media--and ran into the buzz saw of the Conservative Elite. The kicker to today's NYT story by Kate Zernike pretty much says it all:

On Sunday, before the shooting, Mr. Huckabee sounded ambivalent on Fox News about running for president, saying he liked his role at the network and wanted to be sure that, unlike in 2008, he would receive support from the Republican establishment.

Good luck with that now, Mike.

In a post on who gets the vote of "religious conservatives," Steve Waldman writes:

That leaves Huckabee. As a former Baptist minister himself, he has standing to criticize Palin without being cast as anti-Christian. Mainstream media mistakenly assume that Huckabee failed last time because his base was too limited to religious conservatives. Actually, he fared no better among Christians than McCain and Romney early on. He was distrusted by many in the party for being too liberal, not for being too conservative.

This is entirely misconceived. As any examination of the exit polls from last year's GOP primaries will show you, Huckabee did fail because he had trouble drawing beyond his base of white evangelicals. They loved him. The distrust came from so-called leaders of the religious right, whose suspicion arose, at least in substantial part, because they didn't think he could win. His "liberal" moment was over after Iowa. As for faring no better among Christians than McCain and Romney, that's only if you include all Christians--Catholics and and Mainline Protestants and Mormons as well as Evangelicals. Huckabee couldn't win the former, for sure. But Catholics and Mainline Protestants do not constitute the conservative religious base of the GOP. C'mon, Steve!

The big question for GOP big shots at the moment has to be whether Mitt Romney can manage to garner enough rank-and-file evangelical support to marginalize Huckabee. So look for Romney to play a big role in fighting the Proposition 8 repeal referendum. Where has Romney just bought a new home? La Jolla, California.

Update: I don't appear to be the only one with this thought.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I find it noteworthy that Mike Huckabee only managed 7 percent in the CPAC straw poll, coming in sixth behind Romney, Jindal, Paul, Palin, and Gingrich. Sure, Huck had to split the social conservative vote with Jindal and Palin, but those two didn't even show up for the event. Huck did. He's been humping away for Republican candidates. He's said nothing unorthodox by conservative standards in maybe a year. And in last year's Republican primary, he showed he could carry the evangelical base of the party--effectively killing off Romney's candidacy. So what's the problem? My guess is that the hard-core CPAC types still don't trust him--think he's still soft on immigration, still considers the Club for Growth the Club for Greed, and remains altogether too genial towards the enemy. 

This, from Lauren Collins' interview with Mike Huckabee in the current New Yorker, is worth pondering:

While some of Huckabee’s gripes come off as rinky-dink—in the book, he admonishes Romney for hogging golf-cart parking spaces during the Iowa straw poll—others are more stinging. Asked about Sarah Palin, he responded, “She, uh, was an appropriate choice, because she put John McCain back in the game.” That was the get-along answer, but a few minutes later the new, aggrieved Huckabee resurfaced. He recalled, “It was funny that all through the primary—I mean literally up until McCain got enough delegates to win—people said, ‘You know, Huckabee’s really running for Vice-President. Gee, Huckabee would be a great Vice-President.’ And from that day forward, when I actually was no longer running for President, nobody ever said, ‘Gee, Huckabee would be a great Vice-President.’ ” Neither was he quite so unperturbed by the Palin pick: “I was scratching my head, saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. She’s wonderful, but the only difference was she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair.’ It wasn’t so much a gender issue, but it was like they suddenly decided that everything they disliked about me was O.K. . . . She was given a pass by some of the very people who said I wasn’t prepared.”

We've achieved a certain grasp of what got Palin the vice presidential nod: She charmed the pants off those cruising conservative pundits; McCain liked the mavericky cut of her jib; and, yes, the religious righteous elite had her at the top of their lists. But it seems to me that poor ol' Huck is entitled to scratch his head and wonder how he sank so fast from top veepstakes contender to back of the pack.

My guess is that none of the GOP powers-that-be trusted him to be their Highnesses' dog at Kew. ("I am His Highness' dog at Kew/ Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?") He'd called the Club for Growth the Club for Greed, and was never willing to play the government-is-always-the-problem card. He was soft on immigration. He was, or seemed to be, a reluctant culture warrior. He appeared to have no appetite for remaking the world in our image. And his ability of garner votes owed nothing to their support. In a word, he seemed far too independent for a party always in search of the front man, be it Reagan or Quayle or George W. Bush. Under the largely spurious guise of reformer, Palin fit the role perfectly. Sorry, Huck, you didn't.

A scummy extended version of Dole's Godless ad--posted on Huck's blog.

Mike Huckabee is circulating a petition supporting "the sanctity of life" and hopes to have 100,000 signatures by election day.