December 20, 2007

12/20: A Backlash On Backlashes?

As we've discussed on numerous occasions, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are polarizing figures in the blogosphere. Huckabee's recent poll surge spurred a barrage of criticism from conservative bloggers who don't trust Huckabee on immigration, taxes, and foreign policy. The harsh criticism of Huckabee, in turn, spurred a backlash from social conservatives who feel that the GOP establishment expects evangelicals to be seen but not heard.

Similarly, many progressive bloggers (as well as NYT columnist Paul Krugman), think that Obama's conciliatory rhetoric reveals a disturbing naivete and an unwillingness to play hardball with the GOP. Others (such as Matthew Yglesias) think that Obama's speeches demonstrate his ability to win over opponents and build a dominant political coalition. Chris Bowers, who falls into the former category, summarizes the issue thusly:

"The rhetoric Obama uses clearly can be interpreted in different ways by different people. For me, it is the single biggest turnoff of his entire campaign. On its ideological and partisan implications, I don't believe, trust, or even want what Obama describes on unity. For many others, it seems to be the strongest selling point for his candidacy, at least on the multicultural pluralism it promises. It doesn't seem like it is possible to have one without the other when it comes to Obama, but figuring out which part of Obama's rhetoric one favors more does indeed seem like a progressive Rorschach test."

GOP FIELD: A Faction War

Noting that Rudy Giuliani has lost his national lead in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, Captain's Quarters' Ed Morrissey writes: "In part, this reflects the decreasing impact of Iraq on the election. In the beginning of the year, the buzzword for the Republicans was 'competence', and the main focus for that was Iraq. The surge had not started, and the situation appeared to have spiraled out of control...Republicans wanted a tough candidate with a proven record of competence, and at the time seemed willing to compromise on almost everything else to get it. Twelve months later, that deal appears dead. With Iraq heading in the right direction, and with Democrats in total disarray against a President who doesn't look much like a lame duck, Republicans have decided that policy matters after all. In fact, it matters so much that the debate over policy has morphed into a faction war over the past three months, and it has at times threatened to alienate key parts of the conservative coalition."

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt still sees a two-person race between Mitt Romney and Giuliani, with Romney in the driver's seat: "The various threats (Huckabee in Iowa, [John] McCain in New Hampshire) to the Romney plan and the various premature obituaries penned on the Giuliani plan all overlook the fundamental fact that more than 50% of the GOP is pledged to either of these two men. That is because these are the two candidates who can beat Hillary or Obama. None of the other three have shown themselves capable of raising the money, the energy, or the coalition to manage that task...Absent a major mistake between now and February 5, Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee. If he does stumble badly, Rudy will be there to take Romney's voters and the nomination."

HUCKABEE: Splitting The Conservative Coalition?

Yesterday we discussed how the conservative bloggers at NRO's The Corner are fiercely denying the charge that they are opposed to Huckabee because he's an evangelical. As Jonathan Adler wrote:

"I am probably one of Huckabee's more strident critics here on the Corner, but let me stress that it is not because he is an evangelical...I happily support evangelical candidates (or candidates of whatever religion) who espouse sound policy views."

Beliefnet's Rod Dreher sees a double standard:

"It's funny, but when it looked like Rudy Giuliani, a social liberal, was going to be the nominee, we didn't see many, if any, establishment Republican opinion leaders freaking out over what kind of danger to the future of the party and the nation he represented...I think it's fair to say that it was assumed that Giuliani would be a sound representative of the Republican Party, and that the social and religious conservatives would do like they always do and get in line. Pat Robertson sure did.

But lo, it turns out that the candidate who's caught fire comes straight out of the religious/social conservative wing of the coalition, and he is unsound on issues most important to the fiscal wing. It's not supposed to work that way. Nobody at the elite level seems to expect the economic conservatives to suck it up for the sake of party unity. What does that say about the place of social conservatives in the party all these years?

I don't want to overdo this. I think it's perfectly fine to be worried about Huckabee's vagueness, and his unpreparedness. I'm worried about these things too, which is a big reason why I can't say I'd vote for him...Still, it's hard to shake the belief that the real problem with Mike Huckabee, as far as the establishment is concerned, is that he's not clubbable."

NRO's Andrew Stuttaford disagrees: "Much as I enjoy Rod Dreher's writing, his piece is all too typical of the Huckabee-as-victim meme that is now beginning to surface...The idea that social conservatives are not taken seriously by the GOP hierarchy is, quite simply, nonsense: how else to explain, for example, some of the twisting and turning we have seen from Messrs Romney and Giuliani in recent months?"

Like Dreher, RedState's Erick Erickson thinks the GOP establishment is being unfair to evangelicals: "The other day I said all the attacks on Huckabee come across as so anti-evangelical, so anti-southern, and so anti-social conservative that the attacks are doing nothing but helping Mike Huckabee. I expect him to go up in the polls even further as a result of the establishment New York-Washington Corridor of Mainstream Intelligentsia and parts of the New York-Washington Corridor of Conservative Intelligentsia attack his Christmas ad...Seriously? Christians can't talk about their faith in an advertisement that they are paying for?...Sometimes a 'Merry Christmas ad' is just a Merry Christmas ad made all the more refreshing because the candidate is not afraid of his faith. And sometimes the criticism lodged at the candidate reveals yet again that while many in the establishment right want evangelicals in the coalition, they just really don't want them in leadership positions or talking prominently about their faith."

Huckabee himself echoed Erickson's phrase about "the New York-Washington Corridor of Mainstream Intelligentsia" during an interview with CBN's David Brody:

"There is a level of elitism that has existed, the chattering class if you will, who lives in that corridor between Washington and Wall Street and they sort of live in their protected world, and frankly for a number of years many of them thought of people like me -- whether it was because we were evangelicals or because maybe we were out from the middle of America. They were polite to us. They were more than happy for us to come to the rallies and stand in lines for hours to cheer on the candidates...But when they got elected, behind closed doors, they would laugh at us and speak with scorn and derision that we were, as one article I think once said, 'the easily led.' So there's been almost this sort of, 'it's okay if you guys get a seat on the bus, but don't ever think about telling us where the bus is going to go'."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff doesn't like Huckabee's (and Erickson's) argument: "This self-pitying nonsense is an insult to Republicans, and demonstrates further why Huckabee should not be the party's standard bearer. First, Huckabee overlooks the fact that George W. Bush, though not a preacher, is a born-again Christian. If Republicans like [Rich] Lowry wanted to keep Christian conservatives at arms-length why did they support Bush so firmly? The notion that evangelicals have somehow been excluded from the Republican discussion is ludicrous. Second, the quickness with which Huckabee conflates criticism of his record and his policy statements with antipathy towards evangelicals is telling...Huckabee seems to believe he deserves a 'pass' by virtue of his status as an evangelical and the fact that evangelicals have supported Republicans."

NRO's Mark Levin agrees with Mirengoff: "Mike Huckabee is now becoming a very divisive figure in the Republican party. It's not his faith or his Merry Christmas commercial that many conservatives question (I certainly don't), but it's his record as governor and his stated positions on the war, foreign policy generally, taxes, spending, and illegal aliens. And exposing his positions is a natural part of the primary process. He is now using his faith as a defense for populist/liberal/misguided policy positions and implying that those who disagree with him are challenging his faith -- or more accurately, dismissing Evangelicals."

Levin continues: "How did Huckabee become the spokesman for Christians anyway? When did this happen? A few weeks ago he was a little known governor from Arkansas with 2-percent national support among Republicans. Now, he's a spokesman for an entire religion, or part of it anyway. (Also, I am not part of the Wall Street crowd, a neo-con or whatever, in case he or anyone on his staff is wondering. Just an old-time Reaganite.)"

HUCKABEE II: Facing A Roadblock In SC?

NRO's Jim Geraghty thinks Huckabee's Iowa surge may not carry over to South Carolina: "Recent history suggests that Iowa Republicans have a history of falling hard for the candidate who wears his religion on his sleeve the most...[but] it's going to take more than a sweet-talking Southern Baptist preacher to turn heads in the upstate of South Carolina. People there will not blindly follow him because he wears the Cross on his sleeve...Compared to Iowa, South Carolina's Republican voters look establishment: their winner has always gone on to be the nominee. And faith-on-their sleeve candidates tend to be afterthoughts."

AmSpec Blog's James Antle thinks Geraghty is right: "Iowa is more populist, less hawkish, and and more receptive to candidates who emphasize social issues while South Carolina has a religious right that is more divided, more integrated into the party establishment, and more hawkish on issues of national defense...Iowa has tended to be where socially conservative candidates have peaked while South Carolina is where the party establishment has circled the wagons against insurgent candidates. Since 1988, S.C. is essentially where George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and George W. Bush won the GOP nomination, while Iowa has been the best state for Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes (and Steve Forbes), and, if present trends continue, possibly Mike Huckabee...It will be interesting to see if Huckabee succeeds where Pats Robertson and Buchanan failed."

MCCAIN: Credit Where Credit's Due

Glenn Reynolds links to a YouTube video from 2000 in which McCain expresses concern about Vladimir Putin's autocratic tendencies. Reynolds writes: "In our podcast interview earlier this week, John McCain delivered a lot of I Told You Sos. This YouTube video from 2000 suggests that he might add his assessment of Time Man of the Year Vladimir Putin to that list. I have my problems with McCain on domestic policy issues, but on national security and foreign policy he's good, and this video makes you wonder how he would have done had he won in 2000."

RedState's Erick Erickson also links to the video and writes: "A lot of criticisms of NR's endorsement of Romney revolve around them barely touching on foreign policy matters. For as much as Romney is a domestic guy, McCain really is our foreign policy candidate...Ivan's gone crazy again and the State Department seems more interested in capitulating to the Axis of Evil than dealing with resurgent commies in South America, China, and Russia. We might need a cold warrior like John McCain to fight the second coming of the Commies."

Soren Dayton also praises McCain: "Look what McCain said in 2000 about Putin. (H/T Instapundit) The guy understood what Putin was. President Bush, who got many things right in our foreign policy, got Russia horribly wrong. If he had more experience, he might have gotten it right...So when we have these discussions about people's foreign policy credentials, we should at least give credit where credit is due. Experience, at least in McCain's case, would have mattered. As we look forward, we need to remember that. When people attack Mike Huckabee for his foreign policy but praise Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, or Rudy Giuliani, we should remember something fundamental. Their foreign policy statements are ghost-written. John McCain's aren't. That's a real difference."

Townhall's Matt Lewis: "It is now clear that McCain was right all along about the Surge. And aside from showing how much Bush and McCain have aged in the last eight years, this video demonstrates that McCain also had a better sense of who Time's 'Person of the Year' -- Vladimir Putin -- really was..."

DEM FIELD: It's All Tied Up

Open Left's Chris Bowers thinks Obama and Huckabee are the frontrunners for their respective party nominations: "I consider these the gutsiest predictions I have made in over three years. Predicting an Obama vs. Huckabee general election is not the easiest thing to do right now. Literally hundreds of people have personally told me how disappointed they were in my 2004 primary and 2004 general election predictions, and so I made it my business to never be wrong again."

MyDD's Jonathan Singer notes that Obama has tied Hillary Clinton in two SC polls and concludes that the race has tightened: "No doubt this is going to be a brawl over the next few weeks, with several possible outcomes -- perhaps as many as 18 permutations of results out of the first three states, though probably a bit less -- depending on what happens over the next 13 days before Iowa, what happens in Iowa, how the ABC News/Facebook debate shakes out after Iowa, and what happens in New Hampshire. Some of the top prognosticators may still believe that we still have a significant favorite on the Democratic side, but looking at the numbers out of the early states and the vast number of possibilities, I just don't see it anymore -- I just don't see any candidate holding a greater than 50 percent shot at getting the nomination at this point."

Open Left's Mike Lux offers a cautious Iowa prediction: "From what I hear from Iowans, and read about the race, my best guess right now is that Obama wins, [John] Edwards is second, and Hillary is third, and that the top three stay pretty close together. But things could change in a heartbeat, there are still a remarkably high number of undecideds, and the caucuses are extremely unpredictable."

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong thinks "it's all about turnout": "Basically, if it's all the tried and true 2004 caucus goers, plus another 25% or so, that Edwards has the advantage. If it winds up being a blown out caucus that has greater than 50,000 more attendees than 2004 (most of the polls are working off this assumption), then Obama wins. If it's somewhere in the middle, bigger than what would be usual but less than what's being projected in the polls, then it's [HRC]...The big '?' is weather. A snowy cold night will depress turnout. Right now, snow is being projected to begin just after Christmas and getting heavier as the year ends."

OBAMA: A Progressive Rorschach Test?

In an interview with TPM Election Central, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ramps up his case against Obama:

TPM: "Some, including Matthew Yglesias, have argued that this focus on Obama's conciliatory rhetoric obscures the fact that Obama would still more likely prove a genuinely progressive president than Hillary would be."

Krugman: "What evidence is there that she would be especially bad for the progressive movement? For what it's worth, Hillary's actual policy proposals are more aggressive than Obama's."

TPM: "What other things gave rise to your current critique of Obama?"

Krugman: "When Obama used the word 'crisis' about Social Security it gave me a little bit of a sense of, 'Hmmm'...To have Obama sort of sounding like the Washington Post editorial page really said among other things that he just hasn't been listening to progressives, for whom the fight against Bush's Social Security scare tactics was really a defining moment. Among the Dems he seems to be the least attuned to what progressives think. It's a tone thing. I find it a little bit worrisome if we have a candidate who basically starts compromising before the struggle has even begun."

TPM: "But surely there's something to the argument that the skills to build coalitions, to win over moderates on the other side, aren't without any importance. Should we really take tone and rhetorical skills out of the equation entirely?"

Krugman: "No, but there aren't any moderates on the other side...The Democratic nominee is still going to be running on a platform that is substantially to the left of how Bill Clinton governed, and the Republican is going to nominate someone to the right of Attila the Hun. You want the Dem who's going to make that difference clear and not say things that will be used by Republicans to say, 'Well, even their candidate says...'"

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum shares Krugman's view: "Krugman's fear seems to be that Obama is expecting that he can charm and negotiate his way out of this inevitable confrontation, and won't be prepared when that turns out not to work. Edwards and Clinton, by contrast, since they harbor no illusions, will be willing to play hardball from day one. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be out on the hustings every day during their first term hurling populist invective at pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry, but it does mean that, like FDR, they'll be willing to use every lever of power they can think of, both public and private, to get their way."

In a move that certainly won't help endear Obama to the netroots, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter comes to Obama's defense: "[Krugman's] attack on Barack Obama on December 17 was wrong on history, wrong on politics and wrong on what the future holds for Obama's 'big table' idea...Krugman says that pundits like me who reject sharp anti-corporate rhetoric and prefer cooperation are 'projecting their own desires onto the public.' We'll see. But last time I checked, millions of Americans still work for corporations or aspire to do so and bashing them wholesale is a loser politically. It works sometimes in Democratic primaries with a heavy labor vote (though not for Dick Gephardt). But not in general elections. To call Obama 'anti-change,' as Paul Krugman does, is anti-common sense. Leadership requires a mixture of confrontation and compromise, with room for the losers to save face."

Meanwhile, The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias endorses the idea (first articulated by Kevin Drum) that the Dem primary has become a sort of Rorschach test, in which people project their own desires and fears onto the top three candidates: "I read this from Krugman: 'being president isn't at all like being a state legislator.' Exactly, I thought. Krugman has found an example of Obama doing his job as a state senator well, and decided to simply assume that he doesn't understand that being president is different from being a state senator. I see the reverse -- I see a guy who was an effective state senator, which I see as evidence that he'd be effective in other roles as well. It's a pure rorschach issue."

Chris Bowers agrees with Drum's Rorschach thesis: "When I hear Obama's rhetoric, to me it comes off as distancing himself from DFHs, appeasing the Washington Elite Bi-Partisan Consensus, and compromising before negotiations even begin. To others, like Frank Rich, it sounds like Obama is opposing himself from conservatives who have long worked to divide the nation along various cultural lines...I'm pretty sure that both interpretations are correct."

RICHARDSON: What About Iraq?

Bill Richardson posts a diary entry on the Huffington Post: "Some of my fellow candidates have decided to stop talking about Iraq. I'm not sure if they think the surge is working, or just that their polls tell them it is simpler and safer to follow the media's lead and just forget our brave troops and what this war is costing us. Well, I believe that 'easy' isn't necessarily right, so even if I'm the only person speaking the truth on this issue, I'm not going to stop."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: McCain/Giuliani '08?

Campaign Standard's Richelieu envisions another crazy scenario:

"McCain finishes fourth in Iowa, but still ahead of the rapidly fading Rudy Giuliani. McCain will still get a small bounce out of that, and he's been climbing steadily over the last four weeks in New Hampshire. Rudy's decline -- rumors abound that the Giuliani machine has run out of money -- is a godsend to McCain in New Hampshire. Perhaps McCain can upset Romney and Huckabee there and start surging into Michigan and South Carolina...

Rudy continues to drop in the polls. His campaign is indeed broke. The media continue to hammer him on ethics. He finishes a dismal fifth or even sixth in Iowa. Polls show him third or worse in New Hampshire. With his campaign broke and without money to run TV ads, Rudy faces a stark choice. He can either run and badly lose the next four contests -- NH, MI, SC, NV -- and then collapse in Florida. Or he can make huge brazen move to capture the entire race.

On the Saturday after the Iowa caucus, Rudy Giuliani drops out of the race and strongly endorses John McCain. McCain surges and wins New Hampshire. A national McCain surge accelerates. McCain campaigns with Rudy at his side, who is obviously the frontrunner now for vice president on a McCain/Giuliani security-and-competence ticket. In 24 hours Rudy goes from doomed to Superman. With McCain likely to only serve one term, Vice President Giuliani enters 2012 as the GOP frontrunner...

Crazy? Sure. Rudy hates to quit. But he also has a big card to play, and if the next two weeks don't break his way, a very big move may not be so dumb after all."

LEST WE FORGET: David Lee Roth, America's Secret Weapon

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle:

"Matt Yglesias notes the role the Red Hot Chili Peppers played in the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Which sent me on a search for the specific music U.S. troops played when they were trying to flush Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican Embassy in Panama back in 1989. According to Wikipedia, the number one song in the Noriega psyops rotation was Van Halen's 'Panama.' Kind of an obvious choice in hindsight."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at December 20, 2007 12:55 PM