Some of our local talkers are lining up against former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the blended pro-life, sorta populist Republican who has sinned against GOP doctrine by raising some taxes.
The talkers are slamming Huckabee's rise in some Iowa polls, and believe that when real Republicans find out Huckabee isn't a real Republican, they'll turn to a real Republican - - Romney, perhaps, or Guiliani, neither of whom, to the talkers secret dismay, are really real Republicans.
Like George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan.
Here's what our talkers don't understand, because they spend too much time in locked studios, away from real people.
Huckabee strikes people as authentic. He's not a stiff. He doesn't appear scripted. He seems likable.
He's being read as genuine, relative to other candidates, so his numbers are up.
It's similar to Barack Obama's popularity. Even Ron Paul's.
People like fresh faces. It's more than being, as one of the talkers said, "the flavor of the week."
Not every voter is obsessed as are some of the talkers with the microscopic details of tax policy, or their version of Conservative Truth, or the other deadly vagaries of Republican doctrine.
Thank goodness.
I agree that Huckabee is popular for the reasons you say. I also can't stand the other frontrunners. However, I think it's a mistake to think that Huckabee's only problem is tiny details on tax policy. He is like a Democrat; a compassionate conservative on steroids. He raised taxes in Arkansas by 47%. He was even in favor of an internet tax. He loves talking about all his compassionate ways that he wants to spend your money. He's not a conservative. Maybe the others are bad, but he's worse.
ReplyDeleteLet's face it: Arkansas is a poor state, so a populist, regardless of party, is going to well electorally there - - particularly if he's a personable guy.
ReplyDeleteMany if not most people vote with their gut, or heart, not from a talking points' checklist, or the way the righty talkers organize their day, from the Drudge Report and an email from GOP headquarters.
No surprise that Bill Clinton and Huckabee were both Arkansas Democrats. It's a state where programs from the New Deal and Great Society really helped. People don't necessarily hate government there.
The talkers want to condemn Huckabee because he doesn't fit their narrow template. My guess is that they'll cozy up to him if he resonates in other states, but he may be doomed by a lack of money.
Personally, I hope the GOP nominates the farthest-right of the bunch, since the electorate is tired of that ideological narrow-mindedness. It'll help a Democratic year become a landslide.
when you say "talkers" to whom besides Sykes are you referring? just others outside the sykes orbit and network? Sykes seems to be tied in to the NR neocon types, but even at the NR after plenty of purges there's not total mindlock.
ReplyDeleteHow do you define a populist? A true populist by definition is not a man of the system nor one it will approve.
Beware what you wish for. Though it is very unlikely the party would back a far-right candidate, it is a mistake to equate far right with an ideological narrow-mindedness people are tired of. People are tired of the neocons, who are NOT far right but its most successful manipulators and controllers. Bill Clinton was our best neocon! He was simply fortunate his own abandonment of the Powell doctrine (or wasn't it his policies that instigated articulation of those obvious axioms) did not cost him what it cost those asinine new england oilmen.
I probably should be more specific when I say "talkers." Certainly Charlie, and since I don't have notes, I can't say for sure which local afternoon talker I also heard ragging on Huckabee, and whether it was Limbaugh or Hannity, or both.
ReplyDeleteIt just seemed like the AM dial was filled with attack on "Tax Hike Mike," in direct proportion to his jump in the pre-Iowa caucus polling.
We could debate this for a long time - - whether you can be a populist and be in the system, for instance. I think you can be. JIm Hightower comes to mind.
And whether neocons are far-right. To me, they are, in the consequences of the their policies, goal, and so forth.
Certainly Republican neo-cons are far right in my book.
whoa, "to me they are" is backing into solipsism. If "far right" is a meaningful term (as opposed to pure cant), then the "rightness" must be relative to some fixed points, not just your arbitrary subjective ramblings.
ReplyDeleteIf the name brand neocons are "Far right"--and these are people who were/are pretty much all non-religious, socially moderate to liberal, hawkish, hypercapitalist defectors of the New Left--then where is the "near right," and is there a far far right?
What do you do with true fiscal conservative, small government, socially conservative, anti-interventionist Bush hating paleocons, many of which are also classed as "theocons?" A lot of those people now think they just got played and dominated by the neocons who managed to keep the Robinsons and Falwells in check with a minimum of bones thrown to them.
Democrats could look at this as a favor done for them or simply the way the business works. There was a pretty well orchestrated shift from the late 60s to early 80s where the parties swapped positions on abortion. Everyone from Ted Kennedy to Ronnie R. flipped on it. It was a trade of constituencies. Someone has to take those bible belt votes, they'd be a fool not to. No one said boo when Clinton took a lot of them. Yet cozying to those votes makes a Republican pol "far right."
Interesting idea that the consequence of policies one engineers or supports determines one's political classification. Does that mean if Clinton had got us embroiled in some Balkan horror--which would have the natural effect of firing up the military-industrial junky octopus and pour temporizing, pork-loving congressmillionaires--then he would have been "far right?"
And if by some bizarre event Bush and Rumsfeld had lead a 30-day blitzkrieg culminating in all Iraq joining hands under the new management's Golden Arches, they would not be "far right?"
I think it is more likely that "far right" just means "VERY BAD" i.e. unsuccessful, unfavorable results achieved.
There always be an element of subjectivity in political definition.
ReplyDeleteI'd be happy if fiscal conservatives broke with neocon conservatives over Iraq and internventionism, or if religious conservatives broke with small-government conservatives over environmental stewardship and the need for regulation, and so forth.
Well I think it's important to take seriously the way that different groups within the parties see themselves, not so much how they are seen by the other party.
ReplyDeleteI'd be happy if things were simply discussed realistically for once. What are our real security and economic interests, and what are we willing to pay for them? If we've become an over-extended global cop, why and what do we have to do to change that? What so we have to give up, and what rough things must we do to lock down real threats? A serious effort to identify the real threats is really critical and has to quit being a point of partisan bickering.
But can we ever expect an empire consuming 85 barrels of oil a day to completely rethink the many ways it acquires and uses energy prior to the day it is forced to do so out of dire material necessity?
Only the military think about its logistics in terms of self-sufficiency and probably not nearly as well as it should. Regular people bristle at it as being paranoid or hippy, or fringey in a right-wing survivalist way. Concern over carbon footprints is just a fashionable distraction from how big and intractable the addiction/dependence is.
Politicians won't treat the real life and death military and economic issues--the power that must be projected to prop up our way of life. It's too "doom and gloom," too much of a return to the primitive "old days" when scarcity was a mundane reality. We want to believe our prosperity bubble has permanently beaten scarcity.
Well I think it's important to take seriously the way that different groups within the parties see themselves, not so much how they are seen by the other party.
ReplyDeleteI'd be happy if things were simply discussed realistically for once. What are our real security and economic interests, and what are we willing to pay for them? If we've become an over-extended global cop, why and what do we have to do to change that? What so we have to give up, and what rough things must we do to lock down real threats? A serious effort to identify the real threats is really critical and has to quit being a point of partisan bickering.
But can we ever expect an empire consuming 85 barrels of oil a day to completely rethink the many ways it acquires and uses energy prior to the day it is forced to do so out of dire material necessity?
Only the military think about its logistics in terms of self-sufficiency and probably not nearly as well as it should. Regular people bristle at it as being paranoid or hippy, or fringey in a right-wing survivalist way. Concern over carbon footprints is just a fashionable distraction from how big and intractable the addiction/dependence is.
Politicians won't treat the real life and death military and economic issues--the power that must be projected to prop up our way of life. It's too "doom and gloom," too much of a return to the primitive "old days" when scarcity was a mundane reality. We want to believe our prosperity bubble has permanently beaten scarcity.