Posted on 01/07/2015 6:07:25 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
Mike Huckabees 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 Supermans 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 isnt exploring the question of whether hes running any more than Bush is. Bush wouldnt resign from all those corporate boards and Huckabee wouldnt walk off the Fox stage or any stage unless theyd already decided.
Huckabees 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 isnt a left-winger. He was a very conservative and very successful governor of Florida. But within the microcosm of the GOP primary electorate, hes 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 theres a lot of debate about what it means to be establishment but whatever the definition, Bushs picture goes next to it in the dictionary.
Bushs personality was always less populist than that of his brother George. Substantively, Ws compassionate conservatism had a lot more in common with their fathers 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 didnt 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. Thats a bit like saying, You have to be willing to lose the playoffs to win the Super Bowl.
Huckabee couldnt 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. Hes neither bitter nor cranky, and hes often wittier than the very detractors who think big-city liberals have a monopoly on political wit. Im a conservative, he famously said, but Im 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.
Huckabees 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 thats 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, hell likely knock that smile off Bushs face.
mark
Our best hope is that Christie and Bush split the Liberal vote enough for a conservative to win, but I’m not betting on it.
I’ve been saying all along that Huckster is a shill for the establishment to splinter off the evangelical vote.
I...O!!!!!
Because Hillary said she would trade skirts with him during their debates?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.