I watched tonight's debate a couple of times - once on TV and then once online. I reached the same conclusion in both places. Mike Huckabee is on a huge roll, Rudy Giuliani is sucking wind, and Mitt Romney sounds like an automaton. And one more thing - the Republican party should listen to John McCain on torture.
It has long been said that Rudy Giuliani just doesn't wear well as a politician. He exudes a bit of that Howard Dean thing - that sense that he is creepy and potentially a bit unstable. When he was grilling Romney on the illegal immigrants he "employed" at the governor's mansion he just seemed bratty. Romney never hired them - they were part of a company that did maintenance work on the governor's mansion. But Giuliani kept pressing it and it made him look like an angry little man.
Giuliani and Romney couldn't have botched their answers on whether they believed "every word" in the Bible. Romney hemmed and hawed on it. "Well, yeah, sort of, yes, but, yes, well..." It wasn't pretty. Giuliani's answer that the story of Jonah and the whale was just an allegory won't go over terribly well in Christian conservative land. It is exactly the sort of thing that grassroots evangelicals associate with wishy-washy liberals.
In contrast, Hucakbee's frank, "Sure, I believe the Bible is exactly what it is - the word of revelation from us from God himself. ...you either believe it or you don't believe it" will be making the email rounds tomorrow morning in Christian circles across the country.
More than any of those things, however, Huckabee stands out because he is affable. He is unaffected. He sounds unscripted. He sounds honest and looks honest too. And his conservatism is a conservatism that doesn't sound draconian.
Think about this. Republicans have been decidedly unhappy about their options for more than a year now. They went with Giuliani or Romney because "they could beat Hillary." But that is just defense. In Huckabee, Republicans are finding a candidate who they actually like.
Can he win? That is a more traditional campaign cycle question than "can he beat the opposition." It may be the kind of question lots of Republicans find themselves asking and answering, "Well, he can if I help."
Simply put, Mike Huckabee can turn out the base that has been sitting home for the last year.
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Well, America has now seen the quite unpalatable Mitt Romney us Massachusetts residents have seen for seven plus years. The chickens are also coming home to roost for Rudy Giuliani, it seems.
Mike Huckabee did not actually answer the question about Jesus and the death penalty. I think his opponents will turn that against him. The twentieth time you see that answer shown in a TV ad, the dodge will be the glaring element.
David, I thought you had decided that the fallacy of the Bush Administration was to have the Presidency construed as the office of Pastor In Chief. Isn't Mike Huckabee running as precisely that?
What, SkipChurch? You don't believe God can speak through a jackass? I believe six of them are presently being investigated by an initiative that Senator Grassley launched, no?
David, I think Jillian asks a good question about Huckabee as another Pastor in Chief. So far, it's not nearly as off-putting from Huckabee, if only because his delivery is so natural. But how do you think it'd play after the primaries...or when he's handing down policies?
What frightens me is that someone waving a Bible around demanding the equivalent of a loyalty oath to the concept of biblical literalism is seen as an attractive voting prospect by any presidential candidate.
I'm also interested to know if Huckabee's affirmative answer to this fellow's question means that he approves of capital punishment for blasphemy, genocide in service to "purifying" conquered land, a law requiring "innocent" rape victims to marry their attackers (unlike the "guilty" victims who just need to be executed) and other legal/legislative conclusions one might draw from a literal approach to reading some of the Bible's "texts of terror."
The fundamentalists in the electorate: If the man who becomes head of the GOP still panders to their attachment to Biblical literalism, the GOP will lose the center, which is where the Democrats will slide in and scoop the election.
I think, I hope, that enough people have seen what results from a theologically pandering and ideologically calcified leadership to not vote in a variant of the current administration. We will see. Also, for the record I feel for any new president who actually tries to deal with the trainwreck in continuous motion that is the legacy of George Bush and Dick Cheney. You have to ask, Is America better off today than 7 years ago when Bill Clinton finished his 8 year tenure?
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