Okay. You’re a Republican politician running for president and your campaign is collapsing.
Just one month ago, Mitt Romney’s supporters thought that they had Iowa fairly well in hand. But there was Mr. Romney last week, telling several hundred people at a high school cafeteria in Marion that he was the underdog and pleading for their help to keep him from being derailed at the caucuses by the rise of Mike Huckabee.
The rise of Mike Huckabee…
This is a man that has all kinds of vulnerabilities. Here’s how Rich Lowry put it:
As with [Howard] Dean, [Huckabee’s] vulnerabilities in a general election are so screamingly obvious that it’s hard to believe that primary voters, once they focus seriously on their choice, will nominate him.
I’d go further than Lowry. Dean’s weakness was personal, not a matter of policy or his record as governor. Huckabee is the exact opposite. Dean was a loose cannon but he wasn’t nuts. Dean had a tin political ear but he wasn’t corrupt. Huckabee’s vulnerabilities as a general election candidate far exceed Dean’s. Yet, Huckabee is a much better salesman…so maybe it all evens out.
People say that Iowans don’t like negative campaigning, but Romney has to do something. He could point out that Huckabee doesn’t believe in natural selection…a concept essential to any 9th grade biology student. Sure, he might offend some conservatives, but he’d also be highlighting that Huckabee is never going to win a national election. Romney could point out that Huckabee’s plan to scrap the IRS is never going to happen and is insulting to every voter’s intelligence. Romney could highlight financial shenanigans that occurred during Huckabee’s term as governor of Arkansas. He could criticize him for pardoning a convicted rapist on the advice of a pastor (he’d been saved!!) who went on to rape and kill again. He could criticize Huckabee for his lack of foreign policy experience. I don’t know…there is a whole lot to work with even in a Republican primary. How many Republican women want to be told that they should be subservient to their husband? I guess Romney might not want to touch that one…
My point?
These aren’t the things that Romney has decided to attack Huckabee on. No. Romney’s main criticisms? He’s outraged that Huckabee said the president’s foreign policy has an “arrogant bunker mentality”. Romney demands an apology. What else? Huckabee doesn’t hate brown people enough.
His campaign is working feverishly to right itself, zeroing in on Mr. Huckabee’s past moderate record on immigration with critical television advertisements, a mailing and recorded phone calls from a former Arkansas lawmaker who says, “I know Mike Huckabee’s a likable guy, but I also know what he did to our state.”
This is just sad. Romney’s whole appeal should be that he isn’t a mouth-breathing Neanderthal and that he has no connection to Bush’s failed foreign policies. He’s trying to beat Huckabee by running to his right? Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution and he thinks God is directing his campaign. He’s nuts.
And it isn’t just Romney.
…Fred D. Thompson flung the ultimate conservative insult, calling [Huckabee] a “liberal.”
Liberal on what? Abolishing the IRS or keeping women subservient to their men? Where is this liberalism?
This is crazy. The Republicans seriously think they can defeat a southern baptist preacher by running to his right and calling him a liberal? How stupid do they think their base is? Wait. Don’t answer that.
The Republicans think it’s not good enough to be a religious fanatic, you have to be a warmongering racist, too. That is literally what things have come to with this party. The real power brokers think people like Huckabee are ‘idiots’. But the way they plan on beating him is by teaming up with Joe Lieberman, getting all the newspaper endorsements, and then running as more conservative.
Just by way of comparison, this is as if Kerry and Gephardt had attacked Dean by saying he was too conservative and then adopted even more radical anti-establishment rhetoric. It makes no sense.
Romney doesn’t give a damn about immigration…he pays enough for lawn maintenance as it is. It’s almost sad to see the terror on the country club Republicans’ faces when they look at Huckabee.
