Steve Mason's Views

REPUBLICAN DEBATE: GOP candidates team up to gang tackle Romney.

Congratulations to ABC News for the format of Saturday night’s Republican and Democratic debates from New Hampshire. Despite the staggering number of debates in this campaign cycle, this was really the first time that there was any real back-and-forth between candidates. The first 45 minutes of each debate was essentially a free-for-all.

On the Republican side, one thing is sure. Nobody on that stage likes former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. He’s viewed as a wealthy venture capitalist who is a newcomer to conservatism trying to buy the GOP nomination. Both Senator John McCain and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee attempted shots at Romney’s variable policy positions.

Mitt’s problems pre-date his current Presidential run. In his 1994 Massachusettes Senate race against Ted Kennedy, Romney described himself as a moderate Pro-Choice Republican. In their debate, Kennedy called him “not Pro-Choice, but multiple choice.” Romney’s many “flip-flops” will haunt him as long as he hangs on to his Presidential ambitions.

In my view, there was no clear winner in the Republican debate, although former Senator Fred Thompson fared best. The hangdog Law and Order star was quick with a quip and demonstrated some wonky credibility on the subject of terrorism. Mayor Rudy Guiliani, was solid playing his now familiar trump card – his handling of 9/11 and the continuing threat of Islamic terrorism, McCain was mistake-free and statesmanlike and Ron Paul did what Ron Paul does.

This debate, however, was about Romney. Today on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos pointed out that he “watched Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, all of them jumping on, and it seems like they have almost a visceral dislike of you.” The Governor countered by saying he’s “in a pretty good position” and believes that voters will wonder why his opponents are more focused on insults than issues.”

Regardless of Romney’s spin, by late Tuesday, I suspect that he will have come from ahead to lose the first 2 contests in the race for the GOP nomination, and it’s not all that long ago that he appeared to be a sure-thing in Iowa and New Hampshire. McCain and Huckabee have determined that knocking Romney out of the race is their surest path to the nomination. Giuliani and Thompson also benefit from an early Mitt exit.

The polls say that McCain is surging toward a repeat of his 2000 win in New Hampshire, and the question becomes how close can Huckabee get to Romney’s total. Then it’s onto Michigan where a damaged Romney is a favorite son, Huckabee is running 2nd and McCain won 8 years ago over Bush. Then comes South Carolina where Huckabee seems to have a solid lead thanks to the evangelical base there.

THE REPUBLICAN RACE: Huckabee is no rube.

Watching coverage of the Iowa Caucuses Thursday night, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s win was interpreted in many ways. It was a reaction to all of Mitt Romney’s negative ads, or it was proof that you can’t just buy a win in Iowa, or that the evangelical-leaning state rallied around a real-life preacher, or that it was a repudiation of the inside-the-beltway political establishment.

The pundits told me that a win for another Arkansas Governor from Hope, AK meant that resurgent Senator John McCain is a legitimate contender again, and that Rudy’s insistence on what he calls “a proportional campaign” strategy (campaigning in Florida while the rest of the GOP is focused on Iowa and New Hampshire) has turned out to be the right play.

I’ve got a radical theory. Huckabee may be “the real deal.” What he lacks in organization and campaign fundraising, he makes up for with a certain clarity of message. Republicans know him as a Baptist minister as well as the guy that lost 100 pounds and went on to run 4 marathons. In his victory speech in Iowa, I detected that this guy isn’t the bumpkin that the GOP establishment seems to have painted him as.

It would be easy to say that Huckabee is a “one trick pony” – he had the preacher appeal in Iowa, but that won’t play in New Hampshire and Florida. There’s something else going on here.

In that Thursday night celebratory address, he didn’t quote the bible or the Reverend Billy Graham or Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Instead, he quoted an early 20th century English writer named G.K. Chesterton saying “a true soldier fights not because he hates those who are in front of him but because he loves those who are behind him.”

This line is telling in 2 ways. First off, Chesterton is one of the few Christian thinkers who is respected and quoted by both hardcore evangelicals and more liberal people of faith. (In fact, he ultimately converted to Catholicism.) Chesterton defined himself as neither conservative nor liberal once saying that “The whole world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”

Maybe Huckabee can find enough nuance in his thinking to woo the most important November voting block, independents, while he, at the same time, satisfies those core evangelical voters.

The Chesterton reference is also telling of Huckabee’s populist nature. He is a Republican unafraid to acknowledge that not everyone in America is doing well. Maybe there’s something in the water in Hope. He seems to “feel our pain.” Unlike some of his fellow GOP candidates, he talks about poverty, joblessness and making healthcare affordable.

Governor Huckabee isn’t one of the establishment candidates, but maybe the 2008 election really is about change. Maybe this race won’t feature a 70-year old Senator or a slick “multiple choice” pol from Massachusettes or a Senator-turned-lobbyist-turned-actor or a guy known as America’s Mayor after all.

In terms of “the horserace,” Huckabee needs a third-place finish in New Hampshire, a double digit showing in Michigan a week later, and a win in South Carolina on January 19. That would set up a do-or-die showdown with Guiliani in Florida on January 29.

Is it likely. No. Is it possible? Absolutely. This guy is no hick. He’s not the most polished candidate, but he’s far more sophisticated than Pat Robertson was in winning the Iowa Caucuses 20 years ago.

Whether he reaches the GOP nomination or not, Governor Huckabee “gets” what the first President Bush once called “the vision thing.” He is an optimist. He views himself not as part of “the ruling class” (a direct broadside on both Bush and Clinton), but part of the “serving class,” and he tells us that “The greatest generation can be those who have yet to be even born.” In this “change election,” voters seem hungry for something more than specific policies and plans.

The country is yearning for idealism. The Dems have found that in Obama, but, other than Huckabee, it’s hard to see where that buoyancy will come from on the Republican side.