Huckmentum

On (1), does it matter if he is on record congratulating Canada for preserving its National Igloo? here.

I can’t claim any great insight into this question, but of your four propositions, 2 seems the most outrightly dubious. In my limited experience with presidential campaigns, organization matters a lot, and assuming one will materialize is assuming an awful lot.

Proposition 3 also seems a bit off-kilter. It isn’t quite right to say that “Huckabee has little appeal beyond the evangelical movement.” Rather, Huckabee is actively despised by much of the Republican establishment, which is a different proposition entirely. Of course, this could break all sorts of different ways if it becomes clear he might actually take the nomination, but it’s certainly not a good thing for his campaign or his general election chances.

In my limited experience with presidential campaigns, organization matters a lot, and assuming one will materialize is assuming an awful lot.

Yes, but I think the point here is that while Huckabee doesn’t have much of an organization, he does have access to infrastructure that has been laid down over several years and many elections. Usually those two things come together, but Huckabee may have the latter without the former; and it might well be that it’s ultimately the grass-roots infrastructure that matters more than the hierarchical organaization.

If the anti-Huckabee forces don’t coalesce behind a candidate soon (and I suspect Guiliani and Thompson are already under pressure to drop out, and Romney being told he better produce soon), there will be a brokered convention. And Huckabee will lose, even if he goes in with a plurality. This will create a long-term, bitter split in the Republican party, a splendid thing.

I guess what I said was more a prediction than an argument, but the underlying argument is that the money boys will not allow someone making populist economic noises and thumbing his noise at their authority to take control of the party. The real interesting question is what happens if the Republican party disintegrates?

Well, Huckabee has the advantage of a) still being married to his first spouse (kinda like all of the Dems bar Kucinich) and b) not being known for mistreating his dog. Never underestimate how much people love dogs – I have to wonder if the Seamus-the-setter caper turned a lot of people off of Romney, even subconsciously?

Amanda over at Pandagon says that “the chickens are coming home to roost” for the Repubs now – or as Henry put it, the grassroots of evangelicals who are not aligned with the corporate Republican party line are proving to be an unexpected power. Amanda says that the “rubes” (her words) who are supposed to “show up and vote for whoever screams ‘Jesus!’ the loudest” are doing just that, and propelled Huckabee to victory in Iowa – and it’s come around to bite the Repub establishment in the butt.

When a speculative bubble is in full swing, there are always those who say “I know it looks like this can’t go on forever, but this time is different, and here’s why.”

That’s what this sounds like to me. If something can’t go in forever, it won’t.

“It would be nicely ironic if the successful model for decentralized politics in the new millenium wasn’t Dean and the netroots, but the established networks of bible-thumpers.”

Bible-thumpers go out and vote. Netrooters rant on blogs and forums – to each other. The difference seems to be very clear when the metric is votes on the ground, versus punditry in the air.

Huckabee/Paul–for those really tired of lesser evils.

Huckabee may have gotten evangelicals in Iowa to back him, but he put in a lot of time in Iowa. He has not done so in NH where he has very little support in pre-Iowa polls. His lack of organization in NH means that he will not get those pastors talking about him. The real test for Huckabee will be what happens in SC in late Jan. If he does well there, then I think he has a strong shot at the nomination.

With respect to (3), Henry, please put your political scientist hat back on. How do you know what you think you know?

A. You say “more than 80% of Huckabee voters in entrance polls were self-professed evangelicals” but is that what the voters said? What was the specific survey question that forms the basis of this claim?

B. Much has been made of the entrance polls indicating 60% evangelicals for the GOP caucus goers.

(i) How does that 60% figure compare to past turnout in Iowa? How do you know?
(ii) How does that 60% figure compare to turnout among the Democrats in Iowa?

C. What percentage of the general public are “self-professed evangelicals”? Or, if the answer to A provides broader coverage, what percentage of the general public fits the answer to A?

It may well be that the numbers make it impossible for a candidate whose main base of support is evangelicals to win the primaries.

Has this been demonstrated beyong a doubt? I’m not certain it has. Certainly hard-core, church-voting-manual-receiving evangelicals have the organization and the motivation, and they got Huckabee on the map in the first place. But not all self-identifying Christians–especially the downscale-middle-class ones that seem to have voted for Huckabee In Iowa in large numbers–fit that description so completely.

Hmm, these comments sound like the comments made in 1964 as the establishment watched a nobody from Arizona take the Republican crown against the money man – Rockefeller in that case – the last minute establishment man – Scranton – at a convention that pretty much shit on Eisenhower. Who gamely came out for Goldwater. I don’t think it is impossible for Huckabee to win at this point – and it is a little odd to say that the man who couldn’t win Iowa (Glenn Greenwald quotes many Politico style pundits who smirked at the very idea) can’t win any other state. If anything, the Iowa polling seems to be overcontrolled by the Republican establishment. He needs money, but he has the friendliness factor down – Reagan’s secret weapon. Thompson was supposed to have that, but the Republican angel at his crib gave him Reagan’s other secret gift – perpetual snooziness.

The exception might just turn out to be Bush’s nomination. Dynasties often get pinched off at the primary level – Robert Taft, Ted Kennedy, and Nelson Rockefeller – who was the prince of the richest family in America – have suffered from this. Maybe Romney will too. Besides the fact that Romney comes off as a misbeggoten experiment in robotics.

I believe that Huckabee is likely to split the Republican party. He is a response to the early anointing of Guiliani and a sign to the evangelicals that they don’t have to settle. Huckabee won’t win the nomination, but he will set the expectations of many in the Republican base and those voters will sit this election out rather than settle for someone who doesn’t share their most important values.

I don’ think this could have played out better for the Democrats if it had been planned.

Well, I think Thompson’s wife is the one who wants the presidency, whereas Fred just wants to be invited on shows with other old men to bloviate a bit. If she is a trophy, she’s reversed the Pygmalian dynamic – the trophy comes to life and pushes the sculptor. As for Kucinish’s wife, she seems a lot nicer than he is, and smarter, actually, from what I have seen of her. I don’t really know what Kucinich is doing.

Bruce @ 26: I don’t think we should take those interpretations from the NYT or WaPo on faith. Let’s look at the empirical claims you’ve taken from them.

“…downgraded Huckabee’s chance of getting the actual nomination on the grounds that in your average GOP primary, evangelicals comprise only 40% of the GOP vote (vs. their 60% share of it in Iowa).”

Where does this 40% of the GOP vote as evangelicals come from?

“If you take a look at CNN’s Iowas exit poll, however, if evangelicals had made up only 40% of the turnout Huckabee would still have run even with Romney (27% each).”

This gets at several of the problems with the media gloss on the Iowa returns. Let’s look at the CNN framing.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/03/iowa.issues/index.html

Headline: “Democrats voted for change, GOP for faith and values”

The headline implies, of course, that the Democrats did not vote for faith and values. But if you look at the marginals on the same site, it seems that the faith and values questions were not asked of the Democratic caucus goers. An alternative explanation is that the questions were asked but not presented by CNN, MSNBC, etc. Let’s call that doubtful. And if the questions weren’t asked of Democrats, we have no basis for making any claims about the relative importance of religion on turnout and/or vote choice for Republicans vs. Democrats.

On the same CNN page, if you click through to the GOP entrance poll results, the marginals on the “evangelical” question indicate “Born-Again or Evangelical Christian?” That suggests that the entrance poll question was something like “Do you consider yourself to be a Born-Again or Evangelical Christian?” That’s speculation on my part; I don’t know the answer. My guess, though, is that if one had a national sample, you wouldn’t be too far from 50% answering yes to such a question.

Huckabee splits the theocrat vote. There is no way that conservative Catholics are going to vote for a guy who thinks they are damned.

NH debate vs. an NFL wild card game.
I wonder which show had the higher ratings.

William, we’re talking primaries here. In jest.

MSS – I think Kucinich actually campaigned in 2004, instead of just showing up for tv.

Now, if he – or some Dem – had really wanted to do some shaping work, last year in Spring they should have taken a leaf from RFK’s book, and Ron Dellums, and use the power to hold hearings ELSEWHERE THAN D.C. RFK used hearings he held in South Mississippi on poverty to publicize the issue in 65 or 66, I can’t remember which; Dellums held extensive hearing in a number of cities across the U.S. on the Vietnam war. If the brain of the Dem party hadn’t been eaten by consultants in 1996, the no brainer thing to do, in Spring of last year, would have been to break out of D.C. and hold exactly those kinds of hearings about Iraq in a number of major U.S. cities.

Now, that would be wonderful shaping work – but you wonder whether the Democratic establishment would like it.

Thanks, Roger.

Well, Kucinich did hold a hearing in Fallbrook, but one guesses it earned him few votes (there or elsewhere). It certainly did not shape the race.

Has anybody noticed that No. 2 is illegal? Those pastors who are organizing for are violating tax regulations and clearly ought to lose their tax deductions.