October 25, 2007

10/25: Fighting For The Conservative Label

Discussion of Mike Huckabee's rise in the GOP field is generating some major soul searching on what the GOP and conservosphere should look like in the post-Bush era. After talking to bloggers and conference attendees at the Values Voters Summit, Evangelical Outpost's Joe Carter blogs: "Right-leaning bloggers are out of touch with a large portion--if not the majority--of conservatives in America. ... The top four issues that voters said were important to them are "life" (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, embryo destructive research, etc.), marriage, tax cuts, and permanent tax relief for families. Aside from tax cuts, these issues are rarely talked about by the bloggers on the Right. Three out of four issues are ignored--and this is just the top of the list. ... Anyone who thinks tax reduction is essential while abortion and marriage are secondary or unimportant cannot rightly be considered to be conservative, at least not by the standards of the American conservative tradition."

NRO's Jim Geraghty responds: "I think 'secondary' and 'unimportant' are miles apart. The two terms are not synonymous. I can care about abortion, and prefer pro-life candidates, but still think that al-Qaeda trying to kill Americans is the primary issue and challenge for the next president. Secondly, if conservatism is trying to figure out what its top priorities are heading into the post-Bush era, I think the conversation is not helped by declaration, 'if you don't rank abortion as high as I do on my list of priorities, you're not a conservative.' You can say, 'you're a bad conservative, or not my kind of conservative' - but there's a big difference between saying that we must agree on views and we must agree on the exact order of priorities."

HUCKABEE: He's Just A Poor Boy

The longer the spotlight shines on Mike Huckabee, the more negative reviews he gets from the more established elements of the conservative blogosphere. The latest hit on Huckabee centers around his assertion that most Declaration of Independence signers were clergymen. The Corner's Andrew Stuttaford links to evidence refuting Huckabee's claim and comments: "Now, gotcha can be a tedious, pedantic game, but this particular error is, I think, quite revealing of the way in which Mike Huckabee sees this country. You can like that vision, or not, but you cannot deny it."

Instapundit is on the same page: "What could he be thinking? How could anyone who knows anything about the signers of the Declaration of Independence think that? I haven't looked at the video to see if maybe he misspoke or was misquoted, but the sheer absurdity of this statement would argue in favor of that. Or, alternatively, in favor of voting for someone who knows something about the basics of American history."

In other less than positive Huckabee blogging, The Corner's Ramesh Ponnuru examines "Huckabee's Protectionism" and Rich Lowryinvestigates claims that Huckabee does not use speechwriters. Lowry also posts a reader email:

Mike Huckabee represents a type of candidate never before seen in the Republican Party (unless you count Strom Thurmond after 1964). Mike is sui generis for us, at least in our generation. But his type has long been known to and found within the Democratic Party: Southern Poor-boy Populist Demagogue. Think Huey Long or George Wallace, James K. Vardaman, or 'Pitchfork' Ben Tillman, to name the most salient examples of this genus.

But not all is bad for Huckabee. Matthew Anderson, Justin Taylor, and Joe Carter write at The Evangelical Outpost: "Because we are pragmatic idealists we are endorsing Gov. Mike Huckabee. For several months we have admired the scrappy campaign of Gov. Huckabee but believed it would be a wasted effort to support him with our time, energy, and finances. ... We can no longer sit idly by and allow the campaign of a worthy candidate and an honorable man to flounder for lack of support. ... We hope that you will join us in careful deliberation of Gov. Huckabee's candidacy."

ROMNEY: George Allen Hamilton Cleaver

Mitt Romney new "Business World" ad is getting strong reviews. Townhall's Patrick Ruffini blogs: "As if on cue, Team Romney releases an ad that pivots a little bit more to bio. This is good. You need to talk issues as they relate to your experience and your values. But I think people need to hear more about the Olympics experience and the business experience straight up."

Campaign Standard's Matthew Continetti is also a fan: "Slowly, Mitt Romney is rediscovering the rationale for his campaign: a Washington outsider with significant business experience who governed successfully a heavily Democratic state. Over the last year, Romney's large, unwieldy crew of consultants, media types, and pollsters have focus-grouped the candidate to the point where he's become a strange mix of George Allen, George Hamilton, and Ward Cleaver. The turnaround artist has disappeared. Now it looks like he may be resurfacing."

OBAMA: The Politics Of Hope 101

The Huffington Post's Earl Ofari Hutchinson looks at Barack Obama's response to protests of his decision to campaign with gospel singer Donnie McClurkin and blogs: "Politicians do two things better than anything else. The first is they are masters at saying whatever it takes to get elected. The second is they obsessively crunch numbers; and the only number that counts is the number of votes they can get to put them over the top. ... Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama is a fast study of a well-meaning politician that's cultivating those talents."

More Hutchinson: "Obama has looked hard at the numbers in South Carolina and elsewhere, and knows that there are a lot of socially conservative blacks who loathe gay marriage and any talk of gay rights. Their votes can make or break Obama's national efforts. McClurkin can help, and help him in a big way. He's black, popular, and an outspoken evangelical. Obama can have it both ways with him. He can publicly denounce his views, which he has, while latching onto to his crowd pulling coat tails. ... It's crass, cynical, but it's politics baby pure and simple. And that's all the more reason to keep the heat on Obama to dump McClurkin."

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis continues to lead the league in Obama/McClurkin bloggin and he is not pleased with Obama's decision to placate progressives by adding a gay preacher to the gospel tour: "Would Obama put a Klansman on stage so long as he brought a black minister or a rabbi up there too? I'm just not getting the equivalence here: One bigot = one gay guy, and then everything is okay. How many gays balances one bigot, Senator?"

Oh, and Andrew Sullivan dismisses the whole issue as "politics" and just wishes Obama would "get better at it."

In more positive Obama blogging, Open Left's Chris Bowers corrects Harold Meyersonclaims that Obama voted for the '05 bankruptcy bill and MyDD helps announce a new blogger Facebook collaboration called One Million Strong.

BLOGGERS VS MSM: Blogometer Mailbag!

Readers wrote in to disagree about our 10/24 claim that RedState's Ron Paul supporter ban was similar Daily Kos' Cindy Sheehan ban. DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas emails: "No it's not. Paul is a Republican. A site devoted to Republicans has decided to prohibit talk of a fellow Republican. Sheehan is not a Democrat, yet she's launched an independent bid against a Democrat. So on a site dedicated to supporting Democrats, those diaries are not allowed. Just like diaries supporting Ralph Nader in a presidential bid would not be allowed. Or Rudy Giuliani. If Sheehan was contesting Pelosi in the primary, she'd be allowed to post about her "campaign". The two situations are not analogous."

Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat writes: "You got that story completely wrong as far as I know. The ban was on promoting an independent bid against Pelosi. ... Last I looked, Paul was running in the GOP primary. If Kos, whose disdain for Kucinich has been made clear, banned Kucinich diaries, you would have a point. OR if Paul ran as an independent. As it is, you got the story completely wrong."

We responded: "We stand by the comparison. Kos doesn't like Kucinich but Paul supporters have been much more of an administrative headache to RedState than Kucinich supporters have been to Daily Kos. At the end of the day, both Sheehan and Paul were seen as more trouble than they worth to the ultimate goals of the respective sites. Are there differences between the two situations: yes. But we think the impetus behind both decisions is similar enough to make the comparison.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: We're Number 6! We're Number 6!

Data Mining blog points us to a Carnegie Mellon study examining:

Given a water distribution network, where should we place sensors to quickly detect contaminants? Or, which blogs should we read to avoid missing important stories? These seemingly different problems share common structure: Outbreak detection can be modeled as selecting nodes (sensor locations, blogs) in a network, in order to detect the spreading of a virus or information as quickly as possible.

The top ten blogs on their list include: 1) Instapundit; 2) Don Surber; 3) Science Politics; 4) Watch for Weasels; 5) Michelle Malkin; 6) Blogometer; 7) The Modulator; 8) Bloggers Blog; 9) boing boing; 10) Eschaton

LEST WE FORGET: The Federal Humor Commission

The Corner's Mark Krikorian looks at news that Stephen Colbert's SC WH '08 run may run afoul of FEC regulations and comments: "Whatever you think of the guy, this kind of stunt has a long pedigree in American politics, with previous gag presidential runs by Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, and, most famously, Gracie Allen, who ran as the candidate of the Surprise Party. The idea that this would somehow be illegal is beyond absurd."

Posted by Conn Carroll at October 25, 2007 12:55 PM