Here's a YouTube video of Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio campaigning for the Gov. in New Hampshire. Pretty cool! No pun intended. Okay, maybe it was intended, anyway here it is:
Looks like the Gov. is going to come in third in New Hampshire! That's excellent news of course that will get lost in all the hubub over McCain and Romney. I'll post delegate totals as soon as I can get them. This may turn out to be a brokered convention.
If you read my LiveBlog from the debate as well as the after-comments, you saw my thoughts on the Frank Luntz focus group. Well apparently plenty of folks felt the same way and someone noticed that one of the group members had turned up in a focus group last year. And that's caused a bit of concern. Rightly so. Luntz spun this by saying he always tries to include people in several groups to do an anthropological study. That is, he wants to pinpoint exactly when a voter changes his mind and switches support for a candidate. Okay, sounds reasonable to me on the surface. But how is he going to pinpoint the moment of change when the voter is showing up in groups 8 months apart?! There's 240+ days in there where this guy could have changed his mind, as he purports to have done from Romney to McCain or vice versa. That's a pretty big point on that pin, Frank! Bottom line, there's an agenda at work here. Be it Frank Luntz, or FOX, or someone else, this focus group stuff is not on the up and up. Time will tell where this is going. But I doubt it will be without scandal.
So Rush Limbaugh gets his panties in a twist because someone, the always popular unknown insider, dared say that Rush takes his cues from the DC Establishment. So now it's full out war against the Gov. Rush has now gone as far as to suggest to evangelicals that they vote for Fred? instead of Huck. This is what is wrong with these pundits/bloggers. I've railed about this a bit before, but I'll do it here again. Who made Rush the RNC Chairman? Who decided that he has the only viewpoint for conservatives? I don't care how many radio listeners he has, he doesn't speak for me. He doesn't think for me. He's not right on every issue. And that goes for every conservative blogger/pundit. They're just people, like you and me, often not even as educated as we are. But because they have a pulpit, they feel entitled to force their viewpoints on us. So Rush says Fred?, huh? Let me follow that with this:
Fred? is not on the Delaware ballot. Know why? Because this man, this man that wants to be President of the most powerful nation on the planet, couldn't organize a group of signature gatherers to get 500 signatures to get him on the ballot. He came up over 200 short. But this is the guy so-called FredHeads are foaming at the mouth over. This is the guy Rush wants evangelicals to support. A guy who can't even run a campaign. How's he going to run a country? I'll mention again the comments by Charles Krauthammer about Fred? -- he said that after seven years in the Senate, Fred? left "no discernable footprint" and said that when interviewed after his term was up about his best day in the Senate, Fred? responded, "The last day."
New poll data out today has Huck solidly in third place in hostile New Hampshire. This is leaps and bounds ahead of where the informed pundits had him placing just a month ago. Also, Rasmussen has the Gov. in first place nationally and also in Florida (whoo hoo!). Also good placing in California and Michigan. The more these elitist bloggers and pundits attack him, the higher Huck rises in the polls. Hmmm . . .
Here's an article that appears in today's NY Times by Bill Kristol, who was recently added as an op-ed writer amid much screaming and hand wringing by liberals. Kristol is also managing editor of The Weekly Standard with Fred Barnes.
Like Barnes, Kristol's been wary of the Gov. but seems to be warming up to the fact that Huck could very well be the best candidate to defeat the Dems this November. It's a good read. Enjoy:
President Mike Huckabee? By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Published: January 7, 2008
Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.
But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.
For me, therefore, the most interesting moment in Saturday night’s Republican debate at St. Anselm College was when the candidates were asked what arguments they would make if they found themselves running against Obama in the general election.
The best answer came, not surprisingly, from the best Republican campaigner so far — Mike Huckabee. He began by calmly mentioning his and Obama’s contrasting views on issues from guns to life to same-sex marriage. This served to remind Republicans that these contrasts have been central to G.O.P. success over the last quarter-century, and to suggest that Huckabee could credibly and comfortably make the socially conservative case in an electorally advantageous way.
Huckabee went on to pay tribute to Obama for his ability “to touch at the core of something Americans want” in seeming to move beyond partisanship. And, he added, Senator Obama is “a likable person who has excited people about wanting to vote who have not voted in the past.” Huckabee was of course aware that in praising Obama he was recommending himself.
I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at this moment that he turned to me and said: “You know, I’ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I’m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I’ve got to say — I like him. And I wonder — could he be our strongest nominee?”
He could be. After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans — even Republicans! — are ready for a likable regular guy. Huckabee seems to be that. He came up from modest origins. He served as governor of Arkansas for more than a decade. He fought a successful battle against being overweight. These may not be utterly compelling qualifications for the presidency. I’m certainly not ready to sign up.
Still, as the conservative writer Michelle Malkin put it, “For the work-hard-to-get-ahead strivers who represent the heart and soul of the G.O.P., there are obvious, powerful points of identification.” And they speak to younger voters who are not yet committed to the G.O.P. In Iowa, Huckabee did something like what Obama did on the Democratic side, albeit on a smaller scale. He drew new voters to the caucuses. And he defeated Mitt Romney by almost two to one, and John McCain by better than four to one, among voters under 45.
Now it’s true that many conservatives have serious doubts about Huckabee’s positions, especially on foreign policy, and his record, particularly on taxes. The conservative establishment is strikingly hostile to Huckabee — for both good and bad reasons. But voters seem to be enjoying making up their own minds this year. And Huckabee is a talented politician.
His campaigning in New Hampshire has been impressive. At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, he played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”
In general, here in New Hampshire he’s emphasized social issues far less than in Iowa (though he doesn’t waffle when asked about them). Instead he’s stressed conservative economic themes, seamlessly (if somewhat inconsistently) weaving together a pitch for limited government with a message that government needs to do more to address the concerns of the struggling middle class. This latter point seems to be resonating, as headlines in local papers announce an increase in the national unemployment rate amid speculation about a coming recession.
Some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination. They shouldn’t be. For one thing, Michael Bloomberg would be tempted to run in the event of an Obama-Huckabee race — and he would most likely take votes primarily from Obama. But whatever Bloomberg does, the fact is that the Republican establishment spent 2007 underestimating Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee does win the nomination, it would be amusing if Democrats made the same mistake in 2008.
This morning, we bring the unctuous George Will into the Whine Cellar for a visit. But first, we would like to debut a new banner -- Florida for Huckabee -- lovingly created by the stewards here at the cellar. Feel free to use it if you like it:
And now to today's fare:
In a recent article in the Washington Post titled "Pinhead populists", Will lashes out at both the Gov. and John Edwards. [Update: apparently the actual title of this article is "The Problem with Populists." The title above was placed there by the editors of the St. Pete Times. Shows you where their politics are. apologies]
I can see where Edwards is a predictable target as his immense wealth and extravagant lifestyle make his "man of the people" shtick a bit hard to swallow. But going after the Gov. is simply misdirected and more evidence of his east coast condescention.
"He [Huckabee] and John Edwards...promote their curdled populism...encouraging self pity and economic hypochondria...lament[ing] a shrinking middle class. Well."
He goes on to cite an economist's study that says the middle class is shrinking all right, but that is due to their increase in wealth. That's all well and good. Except the Gov. hasn't lamented the shrinking middle class. What he's said is that despite the rosy macro economic picture, those in the middle class feel the economy is moving in the wrong direction and are not feeling comfortable with where they stand. That's a big difference.
He then juxtaposes a quote from the Gov. about how Americans striving to rise are "pushed down every time they try by their own government" with quotes from Edwards about government's "iron-fisted grip" on the economy and finally with boilerplate stats about how the bottom 50% only pay 3% of the total tax revenues to imply that the Gov. thinks that is unfair somehow. I must have missed the part where Huck wants to raise taxes on the lower classes. I would say that Will is engaging in sophistry here, but it's not subtle enough to qualify. It's a clumsily constructed argument, does he think we're not smart enough to see through it? Probably not, he's much more intelligent than us regular folks. Guess I just got lucky seeing through this one, eh George?
"Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: 'In my family, "summer" was never a verb.' Nixon...followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments colored his conduct in office. Here we go again?"
These statements by Will so perfectly showcase his bias and condescention towards anyone not from the Ivy League east, that I barely need say anything. But I will. If you listen to the Gov. he has said repeatedly that he does not want to make the rich poor -- he wants to enable the poor to become richer. That is not the class warfare that Will hopes to delude voters into believing is on the horizon when Huck becomes president. Huck has routinely and correctly stated that the Republican party has forgotten the middle class in it's quest to appease the Wall Street crowd. And this is where his push for the FairTax comes from -- leveling the playing field for everyone. Rarely mentioned is that this new tax structure would eliminate corporate taxes, estate taxes, and so on. Does that sound like someone who's looking at a vendetta against the rich, George? No, it doesn't.
Predictably, Will brings up the Gov's statement about a higher power helping him win in Iowa:
"God so loves Huckabee's politics that he worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?"
Ah, now we get the anti-religion message. And nicely combined with irrational fear about nuclear weapons. What does one have to do with another? Apparently in Will's world, going to church on Sunday is just something you do -- like brushing your teeth, a mindless ritual with no meaning attached. Don't actually believe in God, just go to church every Sunday with the other lemmings. And I suppose as President you can say you pray over decisions, like every president we've ever had -- perhaps bookworm Will should re-read some of Lincoln's stuff, but don't actually think it means anything. I'm not sure, is George Will an atheist? Have to check on that.
"Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe...Washington culture, each would aggravate it toxicity. Each wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements...think opponents are enemies and differences unsplittable."
Gov. Huckabee was in office for 13 1/2 years as both Lt. Gov. and Gov., twice elected to that post. Arkansas is a majority Democratic state. Yet Huck managed to be ranked as one of the top 5 Gov's in the country. How does that happen if one is so combative and suspicious as Will contends? It doesn't frankly, and is another weak, unsubstantiated attack by the increasingly strident Will.
"The way to achieve Edward's and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there."
Ahh, now the other shoe drops -- Huckabee is stupid. Not only is he blindly and dangerously religious, he's a moron, unable to comprehend a simple axiom that Will just created. How much more elitist and superior can Will act? Last time I looked, the Gov. was taking a more Federalist approach, putting more power in the individual states hands. An approach also favored by Will man-crushes Thompson and Romney. Maybe his vaunted team of researchers just missed that bit of Huckabee info.
Then the final indignity:
"Barack Obama...is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic fights against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country."
Oops, another shoe. Three feet? Now the Gov. is not only a stupid, dangerously religious psuedo rube, he's an infant. Speaking of infants, Will is now taking a similar road to the whiners at various blogs who say they will boycott voting if Huck is the nominee. Now that's childish! I'm astonished that a writer who claims such superiority would prefer a completely inexperienced 2 year senator over a 10 year governor for the most important government position in the world. Apparently for Will, there is no limit to his contempt for anyone outside his Ivy League world.
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