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.
