Over at Swampland, they are beginning to get the sense that maybe, just maybe, Huckabee isn't going to stumble and fade.
Over the past 24 hours or so, Beltway pundits and political "experts" have been going bonkers over Huckabee's Christmas ad. For those who missed it yesterday, here it is:
As I tried to explain yesterday, this ad is the perfect vehicle to get Huckabee from here to the early primary states. Engaging the public over the Christmas-NYE break was going to be tricky for candidates (who wants to see attack ads on TV while sipping eggnog?), but Huckabee's found the perfect way to do it. I expected some people wouldn't like the ad, but attack him for it? Nope, can't say I saw that one coming.
Are these people nuts? Huckabee's supporters are the same people who genuinely believe that there is a secular "War on Christmas." And that's why this ad is such a masterstroke. On the one hand, the idea that a candidate would run an add proclaiming the importance of the birth of Christ is unprecedented, but on the other, how can you respond without coming off as both anti-Christmas and anti-Christ? You can't. And Huckabee knows it. Don't buy the "aw shucks" routine. He knows precisely what he is doing.
Here's how Jay Carney describes his appearnce this morning on the Today Show:
In an interview with Meredith Viera, Huckabee turned the hubub over the "floating cross" in his Christmas ad into a lament about the absurdity of political correctness and the sullying of Christmas by conventional politicians. He stood by his criticism of President Bush's "arrogant" foreign policy by touting the "Powell-Schwarzkopf doctrine" of overwhelming force. Then he deftly dismissed the GOP establishment's opposition to him with a populist riff that was Edwardsian in both style and content
And here's how Huckabee spun the episode into a much larger argument about politics in general:
Huckabee: The Wall Street-to-Washington axis, this corridor of power, is absolutely, frantically against me. But out there in America, the reason we're number one in the polls is because I'm the guy that doesn't have some offshore mailbox bank account in the Caymans hiding my money. I'm the guy that worked my way up through it. And there are a whole lot of people in America that believe that the president ought to be a servant of the people and ought not to be elected to the ruling class....
Viera: So why do you think they're opposed to you, Governor?Huckabee: Because they don't control me.
Let me say this again: Huckabee has said all kinds of crazy things in the past, and in a rational world, any one of them would knock him out of the race. But this isn't a rational world, and many of the positions he's taken match perfectly with the views of his own party. They might all be crazy, but they are the same kind of crazy, and in politics that's all that matters. If politics is rational, it is only in so far as people vote for candidates whose views match their own. That is the only part of the process that needs to be "rational." Or to put it another way, if the choice is rational, the views motivating the choice need not be.
But let's be more specific about this... What precisely has Huckabee said that is supposedly so controversial?
Huckabee once argued that AIDS patients should be quarantined. Thanks to Republican Senator Jesse Helms, US immigration policy blocks individuals with AIDS from entering the country. We are the only advanced industrialized nation in the world to do this. Even China is not so stupid. (Update: Maybe we're about to find sanity?)
Huckabee believes that the Bible requires that wives should "graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership." This is a belief that is so widely shared throughout the evangelical community that the Southern Baptist Convention advertises it in the New York Times. In fact, that's precisely where Huckabee's "controversial" statement first appeared! Non-evangelicals might of course disagree, but why this should matter to Huckabee is not clear to me.
Huckabee has said that sex outside of marriage is "demeaning to the highest expression of human love and commitment... because it robs people of the highest possible relationship one can experience: marriage.” He has also said that homosexuality is "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle" that poses "a dangerous public health risk." But among those who support policies such as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and a potential constitutional amendment to "defend" marriage, these statements are both uncontroversial and expected. Beliefs such as these are precisely what are driving these policies in the first place!
He has said that he believes that Adam and Eve were real people, and has admitted publicly that he does not believe in evolution. This is no different than suggesting that the Earth is only 6000 years old, a "fact" that, thanks to evangelicals like Huckabee, even our own National Park Service is no longer allowed to dispute.
He has suggested that his recent rise in the polls is due to the intervention of God. But following both the 2000 and 2004 elections, it was taken as a given among evangelicals that Bush was elected because God intervened in the election. Here, for example, is a quote about the election from one of the most important evangelical political leaders in the country, Paul Weyrich:
God gave this President and this President's Party one more chance.God heard the fervent prayers of millions of values voters to keep His hand on America one more time despite our national sins of denying the right to life, despite ignoring the Biblical injunction against acts which are `an abomination unto the Lord' and despite the blatant attempt to remove God from the public square
Do you see a trend here? Huckabee isn't anything new. He is the logical conclusion of more than 20+ years of political activism in this country. If you are surprised by any of this, I can only conclude that you haven't been paying attention.
These people say what they mean and mean what they say. When they say that they want to take back the country "for Christ," they mean it. When they say that God intervenes in elections, they mean it. When they say that they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, they mean it. And most importantly, when they say they want to elect a man who shares their beliefs, they mean it.
None of these things are going to sink Huckabee's campaign. How can they? They are what have propelled him into the lead in the first place!
If Huckabee can pull this off, it will provide this nation with a moment of immense clarity. I've long assumed that people took the evangelical movement seriously. Judging by the reaction to this man's campaign, however, it appears that assumption was wrong. People have been talking about this movement for what feels like forever, but it is now apparent to me that they haven't really ever understood it. Evangelicals aren't play acting. Their movement is for real. Maybe finally we as a nation are going to come to grips with that. Maybe....
UPDATE: Apparently Huck's Christmas ad is even more brilliant than I first thought. Other candidates have now been forced to respond, and the results aren't pretty.
Huckabee is an evangelical minister. Romney was a businessman, and Rudy was the mayor of NYC. They can't beat him at this game, and by trying to join him they just look stupid. I would have thought that would have been obvious.
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