If conservatives want to wipe the smile off Jeb's face, just SAY NO TO HUCKSTER. This panderer is clearly Jebby's stalking horse to take votes away from Ted Cruz.
Posted on 01/07/2015 6:07:25 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
Mike Huckabee’s “exploration” announcement is good news for the former Florida governor.
Jeb Bush is starting the new year with a smile. Former Arkansas governor and, until last weekend, Fox News host Mike Huckabee announced he would “explore” running for president.
By the way, these “exploration” announcements are yet another example of the government encouraging politicians to lie. Exploratory committees disguise the fact that a candidate is running about as well as glasses conceal Superman’s real identity. They require a willful suspension of disbelief on the part of everyone watching. Politicians like this loophole because it drags out the time in which they are allowed to conceal their donors and provides another round of headlines when they “formally” (and inevitably) announce their candidacies.
This is all to say Huckabee isn’t “exploring” the question of whether he’s running any more than Bush is. Bush wouldn’t resign from all those corporate boards and Huckabee wouldn’t walk off the Fox stage — or any stage — unless they’d already decided.
Huckabee’s announcement is good news for Bush for an obvious reason: The more crowded the right side of the Republican field, the clearer it will be on the left.
No, Bush isn’t a left-winger. He was a very conservative — and very successful — governor of Florida. But within the microcosm of the GOP primary electorate, he’s on the left, for want of a better term.
One such better term would be one we hear a lot these days: the establishment. On the right there’s a lot of debate about what it means to be “establishment” — but whatever the definition, Bush’s picture goes next to it in the dictionary.
Bush’s personality was always less populist than that of his brother George. Substantively, W’s compassionate conservatism had a lot more in common with their father’s political philosophy. Bush 41 announced in his inaugural that we have “more will than wallet.” Bush 43 noticed that we still had a lot of credit cards in that otherwise empty wallet. But stylistically, George W. Bush didn’t run as a “Bushy” but as a born-again Christian Texan.
Jeb Bush seems uninterested in, or incapable of, drawing on conservative identity politics. If anything, he shows a thinly veiled disdain for anything that smacks of pandering to the base. He says a candidate must be willing to “lose the primary to win the general.” That’s a bit like saying, “You have to be willing to lose the playoffs to win the Super Bowl.”
Huckabee couldn’t be more different. He is a pandering prodigy, no doubt in part because it stems from sincere conviction. He got his start as a Baptist minister, staffer for a televangelist, and as a hokey TV performer, and he is fluent and comfortable spinning down-home charm. Much as Ronald Reagan did, Huckabee annoys many of his critics because he refuses to live up to liberal stereotypes. He’s neither bitter nor cranky, and he’s often wittier than the very detractors who think big-city liberals have a monopoly on political wit. “I’m a conservative,” he famously said, “but I’m not mad at everybody over it.”
While Bush talks a lot about the need to run for president “joyfully,” he shows precious little joy. Huckabee, meanwhile, is always having fun, even when he says, as he once did, that we need to “take back this nation for Christ.”
Huckabee’s greatest advantage is also his biggest disadvantage. His support is deep but narrow. In 2008, he won large swaths of evangelicals but struggled to woo anyone else.
And that’s why Bush must be smiling. Just as Bush is soaking up big money, Huckabee may soak up evangelical voters. He may not get all of them; Christian conservatives are homogenous only in the imaginations of those who fear them. And his campaign could self-destruct or fizzle. But for now, he poses the biggest threat to Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Ben Carson, and others who desperately need grass-roots social conservatives. Cruz seems to be betting that he can be a unifying standard-bearer on the right. The more successful Huckabee is, the less possible that becomes.
Huckabee still has little chance of becoming president, but he has a good chance of deciding who the GOP nominee will be. If he decides to attack his competitors on the right, he could serve as a blocking tackle for Bush (and keep alive the prospects of a Vice President Huckabee). If he takes dead aim at the establishmentarians, he’ll likely knock that smile off Bush’s face.
If conservatives want to wipe the smile off Jeb's face, just SAY NO TO HUCKSTER. This panderer is clearly Jebby's stalking horse to take votes away from Ted Cruz.
I posted in a related thread that, when Jeb asked McCain for advice on how to win the nomination without having to pander to the conservatives, McCain likely suggested for him secretly team with the Huckabees, etc., to siphon off conservative primary votes.
Huckabee sure helped McCain against Romney in 2008.
You mean Jeb "Rule of Law" Bush?
Fred Thompson did this for Mitt Romney, too.
Conservatives will be smiling when he has to give his concession speech.
BINGO!
Huckabee is NOT Conservative. I don’t know why anyone would vote for him.
Absolutely, positively a true statement. And with the coordinated help of the DNC-run media who took Huckster from a <5% nobody and manufactured him into a contender (laughing their arses off at the clueless socons who fell for it).
Huck: I'm cool. They like me! They really like me!
DNC-run media: What a schmuck! This gomer really thinks we like him!
Don't fall for this pandering fake conservative again!
So basically Huckabee will be playing the roll of Santorum in 2016?
Remember it was Santorum and Bachman which ran the screen for Romney in 2012.
Of course Santorum may just decide to play the role himself and leave the Bachman part to the Huckster.
There's a theory about that ....
Oh, barf.
NO Huckabee!!! NO Bush!!! NO Romney!!! NO Christie!!!
TED CRUZ FOR PRESIDENT!!!
And Fred Thompson was the ONLY possible alternative to McQueeg or Romney, but the Huckster (aided by the gOpE and the DNC-run media) siphoned off the conservative vote from Fred to allow McQueeg to win.
Roger that. Santuckabee or Huckatorum. Two peas from the same pod. JUST SAY NO! to both of them.
Can you imagine these two on the same debate stage?!
Not only “no” to the Huckster, but “no” to Rick Santorum, the Catholic version of Huckster.
Both are stalking horses for Bush designed to target money-raising sub-groups of the Republican party, and thus hurt viable conservative candidates (e.g., Cruz).
Fred Thompson did it for McCain. Romney benefitted from Newt’s personal baggage and a slew of inexperienced and gimmicky candidates from the right. Bush will have to deal with Cruz and Rand Paul. Neither McCain nor Romney had to deal with anyone of their pedigree. While I wouldn’t discount Bush’s chance of winning the nomination, he is going to have a much bigger fight on his hands than the others had and I just don’t see Huck getting traction for him this time.
Why shouldn’t he smile? The same GOP-E that just ensured that Boehner was re-elected Speaker by a massive majority has already determined that they want another Bush - this time an openly pro-illegal immigration Bush - to carry the Republican mantle into 2015. Unless the Tea Party can find a suitable candidate to back early in the process AND have that candidate avoid the stumbles of Rick Perry, then the conservative support will be split among a number of lesser candidates who will not have the capacity to fight the enormous machine that is the GOP Establishment. Remember, it is only twice in the past 70 years that conservatives were able to defeat the Establishment’s choice.
I don’t know who running will help whom, but one thing I do know, there is no circumstance under which I’ll ever vote for a Bush again....for any office.
What I can’t for the life of me understand is the depths of the GOPe’s stupidity. Ok, they want an establishment type, understandable for them. But they can’t even pick someone new!?!? They can’t pick a sitting governor!?!? They can’t embrace the new talent that has been at the forefront of utterly seizing control of the state houses? For the GOPe the future isn’t now, it’s then, the past. It’s the one guy that breathes life into the democrats major deflection defense, namely, “blame Bush.” Jeb will equal W in the voter’s minds, a Bush is a Bush. Amazing, the last time out they nominated the ONE guy who could not attack the democrats biggest weakness, Obamacare.
It’s obvious to me that the GOPe has occupied the moderate wing of the democrat party that was left vacated.
Congrats American voters, here are your choices on the menu, the moderate or left wing of the uni-party, you choose.
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