Posted on 04/02/2013 6:51:34 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ed Morrisseyflagged this Politico piece earlier but I want to pay special attention to Huck's comments. Gabe Malor called BS on them on Twitter this morning. I think he's right. Huckabee's latest shot across the party establishment's bow:
“The last two presidential elections, we had more moderate candidates, so if anything a lot of conservatives went to the polls reluctantly or just didn’t go at all,” said Huckabee in a separate interview. “If all of the evangelicals had showed up, it may have made a difference.”…
Huckabee, like Santorum, was a bit incredulous at the attempt to fault social conservatives when the party nominated two individuals who largely shunned talk of culture in the general election and were uncomfortable when they had to discuss issues like abortion.
“Nobody would say that these were guys that just light ’em up at the National Right to Life Convention,” cracked Huckabee.
In other words, lower social-con turnout for Romney last year proved that the party’s already on thin ice. Move any further to the center on, say, gay marriage and who knows what might happen? Just one problem: Unless I missed something, social-con turnout for Romney wasn’t lower. On the contrary, after months of liberal concern-trolling that conservative Christians might not show up on election day for a Mormon, evangelicals gave Romney the best turnout among their demographic that any modern GOP candidate has seen. Remember this exit-poll comparison published by Pew a few days after the election?
Not only did Romney match Bush’s share of white evangelicals from 2004, when Dubya and Rove famously used the gay-marriage issue to mobilize social cons, he actually did ever so slightly better among evangelicals than he did with Mormons. But wait: To say that Mitt matched Bush’s share isn’t to say that the same number of evangelicals turned out for both. It could be that 20 million voted in 2004 versus only 10 million in 2012, with the GOP nominee winning 79 percent of each. Is that what happened? According to the exit polls, no. In 2004, white evangelicals made up 23 percent of an electorate composed of more than 122 million voters; last year, they made up 26 percent of an electorate consisting of more than 127 million voters. As a share of the electorate and of total voters, Romney actually improved on Bush’s performance. The only way Huck is right is if the rate of growth among the white evangelical population between 2004 and 2012 should have pointed to even greater turnout last year than what we saw. I haven’t seen any data to that effect but I’m willing to be corrected.
If Huck is right that Romney’s too moderate for social conservatives’ liking, why’d they turn out for him in such high numbers? Simple: They’re not single-issue voters. Skim through the graphs compiled by the NYT’s Thomas Edsall a few days ago. On subjects like harmful government regulations and strong defense, white evangelicals top white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. They’re conservative more or less across the board, which is what the party establishment’s counting on if the nominee has to finesse the issue of SSM with a federalism dodge three years from now. The X factor is whether Huckabee, Santorum, or some other prominent social conservative pol will turn gay marriage into a litmus test. That’s what was missing from 2012 — maybe evangelical turnout for Romney would have been lower if Huck had agitated against him by reminding voters of his pro-choice past. But he didn’t. Social conservatives were roundly unified behind Mitt in the interest of defeating O, even when they denounced him as being the lesser of two evils. The one silver lining for the GOP in potentially having to face Hillary in 2016 is that she’s sufficiently polarizing to maybe keep social conservatives in the Republican tent even if they’re unhappy with the nominee’s position on SSM. With a lesser known Democratic nominee, the impetus to unite and defeat the great liberal threat might not be as strong.
It doesn't explain any of those things. I was simply pointing out that Huckabee was largely responsible for costing us a Senate seat in a state we should easily have won. Akin was a horrible statewide candidate - and Huckabee backed him from the beginning. There was a good reason the Democrats poured millions of dollars into the GOP primary to help nominate him.
Those races you list all had their own unique set of circumstances. West was in a newly drawn district, Bachman probably alienated some voters by focusing on her presidential run, etc. Saying that, you won't hear me claiming that just running as a solid conservative is automatically a winner. It's not. There is a reason politicians tend to "moderate" and move to the center for general elections. It works, and politicians on both sides know it.
Huckabee who gave Obama a pass for almost everything he did until the 2012 election? Huckabee who sat across from Michelle as she lied and said gvmt would spend no money on her fight against fat children? Huckabee liked that Michelle was fighting/forcing better eating habits.
Huckabee is a nice guy but he was suckered by both the Obama’s. His reluctance to call out Obama was no different than the cesspool media.
True, but I would not cross the road to vote for Huckabee, either.
Exactly. Thats why if it comes down to Jeb vs Hillary. I’ll vote Hillary. Maybe Rove will get the message. This country has already passed the point of no return.
PS. If the GOP votes for amnesty. I’ll vote twice for Hillary!
RE: Huckabee is a nice guy but he was suckered by both the Obama’s. His reluctance to call out Obama was no different than the cesspool media.
Huckabee is not conservative in the sense that I don’t believe he is a Federal government must be “hands-off” sort of Politician.
He has his pet causes and will use the power of government to fund these causes.
Akin said something stupid. Even those who got where he was coming from were offended by how he said it. If he hadn’t tripped over his tongue, he had a good chance of beating McCaskill.
didn’t support a more moderate nominee
Lord have mercy. Moderate? As if the GOP is not Democrat lite already...
Akin stabbed himself in the back, not Karl Rove. He lost the moment that sentence left his mouth. It was a SIXTEEN POINT MARGIN. Anyone who thinks that could have been turned around is on a wide variety of narcotic substances.
Most people in the country haven't even heard of Karl Rove, much less relying on him to tell them who to vote for.
He's completely wrong. Did you bother to read the article?
And I have to point out that in Huckabee's HOME STATE of Arkansas, even adjusting for population growth, Romney did better in Republican turnout than both McCain in 2008 AND Bush in 2004!. How is that remotely possible if social conservatives stayed home?
Candidate BH Obama Mitt Romney
Running mate Joe Biden Paul Ryan
Electoral vote 332 206
States carried 26 + DC 24
Popular vote 65,907,213 60,931,767
Percentage 51.1% 47.2%
Even if ALL four million (referred to stayed at home) had voted for Romney he STILL would have lost.
There are multiple reasons and each race is different but here is one common element on those three:
They all “went national” and the local people (voters) paid them back for it.
Even Mia Love was campaigning in Ohio in October.
I held my nose and voted for McCain, I held my nose and voted for Romney—both times wondering how in the world they were the candidates. But no more, I am not compromising my morality or my convictions ever again. Perversion will never get my vote, not ever.
Still waiting on Romney and crowed to begin campaigning ~ guess they’re going to sit it out.
So you're saying there are not enough conservatives to elect someone without the "Karl Rove crowd"? Because Akin got annihilated. It wasn't even close.
The republicans were more vocal in taking down Akin than the democrats were
That's a bunch of crap. Democrats were using Akin all over the country to put Republicans on the defensive. His name came up in races across the nation and became the centerpiece of the Democrats "war against women" campaign.
Huckabee stepped in later, in an attempt to pull Rove's dagger from between Akin's shoulder blades.
More crap. Huckabee was a supporter of Akin's from the beginning. The Huckster endorsed Akin in his primary run, despite the fact that the Democrats spent almost 2 million dollars to help nominate him. When the left is spending a huge chunk of change to help nominate a Republican, don't you think it should be sort of obvious there is something wrong with said candidate?
It was an honorable thing to do, and I respect Huckabee for it. He stood up against the GOPe; it's about time we all followed suit.
It was the stupid thing to do. Utterly and completely idiotic. General elections are about winning, not teaching some group you don't like a lesson. Akin obviously couldn't win once he spouted that silly nonsense about rape. He should have withdrawn - and almost every conservative including Rush, Palin, etc, tried to steer him in that direction. Huckabee is one of the morons who convinced him to stay in the race and sold social conservatives on the idea he could still win.
I'd take Akin over McCaskill any day of the week.
Of course, so would I - that doesn't make him a good candidate. There is no point in running candidates who has no chance to win. Once Akin yammered on about rape and women's bodies magically preventing pregnancy it was over.
Because (and I will get flamed) most who claim to be 'Catholic' are Easter/Christmas day church goers that couldn't even quote one verse from the giant, decorative KJV Bible collecting dust on their coffee table.
That’s it, get it out of your system.
I’m happy with our new overlords, they even requested I report to the train station with all my money and stuff so I can be relocated to some great place in Poland.
They also could have let Ron Paul speak for 20 minutes or so. Ron Paul does have a following made up of the young hipsters that could have given Romney 500,000 to a million more votes and take that same number of votes away from Obama.
It is unbelieveable how bad a campaign they ran.
That was certainly a memorable convention, but not for positive reasons.
You may also recall that unbelievable speech by Newt Gingrich and his wife that left me scratching my head and saying, "whiskey tango foxtrot!" Gingrich has a reputation for giving fiery, spellbinding and authoritative speeches, and for several years, his title was Speaker of the House. Yet his platitude-laden address sounded like a sixth-grader's first speech before his classmates. Apparently, those who were running the show weren't about to allow Gingrich to be himself.
Then there was the "mystery guest." Many of us were hoping it would be Sarah Palin, but instead, it was a washed-up Hollywood has-been who delivered a rambling, mediocre address.
And we learned just yesterday that the guys running the show were trying to get Lady Gaga and/or some rapper to perform.
Why did conservatives stay home in November? Judging from the RNC, it seems as though the GOP-e doesn't want their votes.
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