Ross Douthat chews over the pros and cons. Excerpt:
If the first rule of picking a running mate is to risk as little harm to the ticket as possible, then Mike Huckabee shouldn't be John McCain's first choice for veep--or his second, third, or fourth, for that matter. With the exception of a certain junior senator from Illinois, Huckabee is easily the most interesting political talent to emerge during this campaign season. But he's also the most unpolished and unpredictable, with a longer list of enemies than any politician so new to the national stage ought to have and a regiment of Arkansas skeletons clattering around in his closet. Few of McCain's potential veeps are so vulnerable to caricature, few would draw so much fire from within the GOP, and few are as easy to imagine lurching cheerfully off-message in the heat of the campaign, alienating a key constituency with an ill-timed gaffe or a badly played attempt at humor.But, in passing over Huckabee--as he almost certainly will--McCain will be passing over a politician who embodies more than a few of the traits that the Arizona senator ought to be looking for in a running mate, both in terms of reinforcing his strengths and balancing out his weaknesses. Like McCain, Huckabee has self-consciously branded himself a "different kind of Republican," which happens to be the only sort of Republican with a chance to win the White House this November. But he's a different kind of "different kind of Republican" than the Arizona senator--a competent governor rather than a maverick legislator, with a record that's defined by kitchen-table issues like health care, education, and transportation rather than the more boutique causes (campaign-finance reform, say, or the crusade against earmarks) that McCain tends to champion.
Ross appears to come down on the idea that Huck would be too risky for McCain to take on. As much as I like Huckabee, that's probably sound. And being part of the McCain ticket this November probably won't do any aspiring GOP president's reputation much good. A Republican friend said to me over the weekend, "This McCain campaign's starting to feel like Bob Dole all over again."
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McCain will never get disaffected Democrats with Huckabee on the ticket. Period.
BTW, when did it become necessary to post an email to post here?
"I don't think most conservatives would have a problem with this."
Among the many conflicts between people who read the Bible literally is the appropriateness of alcohol. There is clearly a brand of relgious conservatives--many who could be found in places like Texas--who believe alcohol consumption and profiting from it as sinful behavior based on a literalist reading of the Bible.
"There is clearly a brand of relgious conservatives--many who could be found in places like Texas--who believe alcohol consumption and profiting from it as sinful behavior based on a literalist reading of the Bible."
Afraid that's not true, Daniel. The fundamentalists' opposition to alcohol comes in spite of their literalist reading of the Bible, not because of it. I know this first hand, because I was one. You can make a literalist Biblical case for voluntarily abstinence, but to do so for prohibition requires a certain amount of hermeneutical inconsistency and eisegesis.
Yes please please please put Huckabee on the ticket. Your heads wil spin from the speed with which people will run from the Republicans who would turn America into a theocracy. Or have you already forgotten that the "Constitution Must Be Changed To Conform With "God's Standards" ?
Rob G,
I, too, once "was one" like you, and you are wrong. Every single Pentecostal pastor (and Baptist ones and Salvation Army officers too) that I ever heard all denounced alcohol based on their reading of the Bible. Whether or not it is a "literalist reading" or a selectivist reading is pretty much moot. Booze is, for those "brands of religious conservatives", a big-time major "SIN". (And yes, they do tend to rank them.)
Apology in advance to all those offended by the use of caps in that word, but in this case, it cried out for it.
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