Fox: Why Huckabee matters

Russell Arben Fox is a close observer of populism, and though not a conservative, he has put together a rich and intelligent analysis of the Huckabee campaign and what it could mean for the future of conservatism and American politics more broadly. First, a bit about where he's coming from:

This is particularly relevant for me. I've never voted for a Republican candidate for president, and strongly doubt I would do so this year, even if Huckabee were the nominee. I carry a lot of social traditionalism and localism and religious conservatism around inside me, but I think I'm first and foremost an egalitarian and a social democrat; if the election were tomorrow, and I had to vote for a major party candidate (which I've only done twice in all the years I've been eligible to vote in a presidential election year), then it'd be a toss-up between Obama and Edwards, with Edwards probably getting the nod. Yes, yes, abortion and all that, but what about wages and health care and neighborhoods and schools? No Democrat--or Republican for that matter--is thinking about social justice exactly the way I would like, but there's a couple that are legitimately closer than others, and they aren't Huckabee. So why do I follow the man's campaign so obsessively?

Fox goes on to explain that Huck's populism is far more a matter of style than policy substance, and anyway, the social and economic conditions that created the old Populist movement no longer exist. Still, he hopes:

...that there can nonetheless be a "small-p" populism, a genuine interest in making life more livable for the non-elites out there, that co-exists with major party platforms and all their compromises. Maybe that makes me just a meliorist at at heart, though I hope not. Huckabee has a lot of crackpot conservative ideas (how a national sales tax could be truly progressive I've yet to have explained persuasively to me), but then again, he genuinely tried to make public education workable in an Arkansas under all sorts of financial and legal pressures, all while keeping the door open for home schoolers, school choice, and charter schools; he drew a line against Arkansas being the latest state to make itself addicted to the easy money promised (but rarely in full delivered) by advocates of state gambling, which is of course rarely anything more than a tax on the desperate and gullible; and so forth. A true defender of local authority and economic sovereignty? Er, no. But more populist than the venture capitalist from Massachusetts or the wanna-be Caesar from New York City? Definitely.

And Fox thinks that even if Huck loses the nomination, or wins the nomination and loses the general election, his voters aren't going to assume their regular position. Rather, he foresees the possibility of a new coalition developing:

No doubt it would take a few election cycles to happen, if it ever did, but what a triumph it would be for America's political landscape--for the first time in who knows how long, a genuinely (if only tentatively) Christian democratic option on the table! Some what it if went by the name of Republican: I could just tell myself that the party of Lincoln has rediscovered itself, and I'd have someone to support. And if that doesn't happen--if Huckabee gets destroyed by the NRO-Club-of-Growth-neocon establishment before he gets even close to the nomination? Well, frankly, who cares? Completely aside from whomever becomes president, if a Huckabee candidacy could drive an even very small, pseudo-populist stake into the heart of the by-now-incoherent Reagan coalition, that would open some eyes to the reality of the stifling deal many socially conservative voters have been obliged to swallow for years now, maybe even switch some votes. Even that result would get me declaring the 2008 election season a fabulous success.

Well said, Prof. Fox!