Huckabittereinder?
Posted on May 13th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Count me as another skeptic of the claim that Huckabee is preparing a secret army of evangelicals who wish to punish the land by helping to defeat McCain and bring about the fiery maelstrom of an Obama administration. Had Huckabee wanted to take down McCain and weaken him for a contest with Obama, he had many opportunities before this, and he would have been cheered on by a lot of conservatives in the process earlier in the year. One of the many reasons movement conservatives still dislike Huckabee so powerfully is that he helped make McCain’s nomination possible and seemed to enjoy doing it, partly because I think he was doing it to poke movement conservatives in the eye for their previous resistance to his candidacy. The people who have to worry about a long-term “Christian problem” are the movement conservatives who quite plainly told evangelicals where they could put their religion and their social conservatism. McCain may or may not win over enough social conservatives, and low turnout may hamper his efforts to get elected, but the people who are going to pay more over the long haul for snubbing and ridiculing Huckabee will not be McCain, but rather those who seemed to be appalled by what Huckabee represented. These were the people who declared that, while McCain was bad, Huckabee was unthinkable as the nominee.
The one major candidate who consistently showed respect to Huckabee, and by extension to his voters, was McCain, despite the fact that Huckabee was the greatest threat to McCain’s success down the stretch. Huckabee and his supporters have no interest in sabotaging McCain’s victory. It is Huckabee’s enemies within the movement who have every reason to hint that he is actually disloyal and will be working against the nominee. Of course, it’s possible that Novak found someone who believes that Huckabee shares his apocalyptic vision of the ‘08 election, but for the reasons Ross laid out this is pretty meaningless.
For all of the denunciations of Obama as an out of touch liberal elitist, most of the denunciations of Huckabee and his supporters (remember “Huckleberry”?) came from the NRO/Weekly Standard right, and were couched in expressly class-based terms.
Every so often I forget that Robert Novak hasn’t crawled under a rock in shame, never to be heard from again. Those are nice moments.
Correct, Adam. This is something I mentioned once or twice in previous discussions of the elitist charge. Where upscale liberals talk about “voting against their interests” and “bigotry,” those people talk about “isolationism” and “nativism.” It’s the same sneering condescension, just for slightly different objectives.
Well, yes, except that Huckabee wasn’t/isn’t isolationist or nativist…
No, he isn’t, but those are often the charges leveled at people like his supporters. During the campaign he was demonised as an “economic populist,” when he was no such thing, and a “protectionist” because he occasionally said things about fair trade, despite being an avowed supporter of NAFTA and every free trade deal under the sun. Plus, his working-class background, Southern origins and former career as a pastor were all used by the tongue-clucking secular conservatives back east to ridicule and belittle him and his backers.
Oh, I totally agree that he and his supporters were tarred with the class and populist brush…
When they were already Armageddon acolytes, I would think classist/populist would be an improvement.
My only problem with Ron Paul is that he has two first names like many talk show hosts.
The problem with movement conservatives is they are in the bowels of the GOP. And the elephant seems constipated.
I know despair is a terrible sin, but Jesus was never in a democracy faced with picking the lesser evil between the three. Conversely, could even the most ardent and vengeful evangelical think of a worse plague than this election cycle?
Huckie was a socialist of the corporate variety. I’m surprised that Johnston’s book “Free Lunch” isn’t getting more play in the paleo con world.
And finally, I suspect the debasement has reached even to the value voters.