Eerie Prescience to Starboard!
Meanwhile, let me be the first to predict that Mike Huckabee will be the Republican nominee for President – or close to the first. He scores high on likeability. He’s conservative as such things are defined today, with a longer track record of support for Christian Right issues than the current front-runners. The Mormon and the cross-dresser make spectacularly flawed candidates to “the base,” and I suspect that Fred Thompson, if he runs, will turn out to be too transparently stupid even for the GOP. The cat has already curled up on the bed of the McCain campaign. Tancredo and Brownback aren’t TV-friendly. The 26%ers despise Ron Paul. Plus, while all the candidates have ritually intoned the proper “GWOT Forever!” phrases, as the year turns, the party’s regulars will realize that Giuliani and Romney have tied themselves to a despised President and unwelcome war so flamboyantly that they can’t be saved. Because Huckabee has been a second tier candidate, he’ll have just enough maneuverability to finesse – in GOP primary voters’ minds anyway – the gap between “Stand by our man neotenous CinC” and “Get this thing OFF ME!!!”
There you have it. I’ve laid my marker. Feel free to laugh when Huckabee drops out after bombing in Ames.
Comment by Gary Farber —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
It’s one of those if-he-wins, you’ve defied conventional opinion to win, things, so you’re brilliant, but if he loses, you’ve defied conventional opinion to lose, things, so it doesn’t matter, because most people were wrong, so it’s pretty much a win-win opinion.
So I win by pointing this out, either way!
Me, it looks like Huckabee is Robert Taft: gonna get a nice sincere minority, and some nice tributes later, and a fruit basket, but nothing more. No one but me is brave enough to claim this bingo position!
But the fun is seeing.
Comment by Eric Martin —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
The cat has already curled up on the bed of the McCain campaign
Youse funny Jim
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
Direct swipe from Leno, hence the link.
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 7, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
No sensible electorate is going to elect as Leader-Decider-Nanny anyone named Huckabee.
Comment by ajay —
August 8, 2007 @ 3:50 am
“neotenous”??
Comment by Andromeda —
August 8, 2007 @ 6:18 am
Strangely, *I* like Huckabee, and I’m not a Republican, and I’m really not a Christian conservative. I don’t always *agree* with him, but he seems well-spoken, intelligent, measured, and capable of bipartisanship.
Which is to say, he’s doomed. No one I appreciate ever does well.
Comment by KCinDC —
August 8, 2007 @ 7:27 am
But Jim is talking about the United States, Matthew.
Comment by bbartlog —
August 8, 2007 @ 8:33 am
Huckabee seems like a good contender to me too, not that I would vote for him. But ditto Andromeda: I’m a terrible judge of who the electorate will actually like.
Besides Thompson being kind of dim, does anyone think he may have serious health problems? It’s known that he has indolent non-Hodgkins lymphoma (which could fairly be described as ‘incurable cancer’, if I were in the business of writing opposition copy…). And one of the symptoms of that is chronic fatigue. Maybe Fred is sitting out the early rounds as a gambit (and not a bad one if so), but it’s also possible he really doesn’t have the strength to do much campaigning and is trying to conserve his energy…
Comment by Rob —
August 8, 2007 @ 9:29 am
Well this is a country that decided that the word Bush was masculine.
Comment by matthew hogan —
August 8, 2007 @ 10:09 am
And more masculine than Gore.
Comment by Tillman Fan —
August 8, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
I saw Newt Gingrich on C-Span last night, and he thinks that Huckabee is the most likely of the “second tier” candidates to have a shot at the nomination. For what that’s worth.
Comment by Avram —
August 8, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
My friend Dvd Avins made the same call back in February.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 8, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
The thought of Hillary mobilizing the old Clinton Arkansas political machine against Huckabee’s machine is frightening. I don’t know much about Huckabee’s operation, and I know Hillary hasn’t been in the state much for a while, but I’ll bet on two things:
1) The former Arkansas governor’s most fervent enemies are no doubt in Arkansas.
2) Bill Clinton will call in favors to get them on board.
I’m not exactly excited at the thought of two machines from the same state dusting off grievances that go back decades for a throw-down on the national stage.
Comment by Hesiod —
August 8, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Yeah. Huckabee sounds like your kinda guy, Jim.
Comment by Nell —
August 8, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
Seconding Thoreau’s point heartily. I’ve already read some grim things in comment sections about Huckabee from Arkansans; he’s not quite as straight-arrow as his national rep would lead you to think (one of the effects of a name like ‘Huckabee’, maybe….).
Comment by rho —
August 8, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
Heh. The second-tier candidates for both parties are infinitely more interesting and worthwhile than the top tier.
The top tier can only go down; the second tier have nothing to lose by being honest. How refreshing!
Comment by voisine —
August 9, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
the 26%ers might hate ron paul, but then again people are switching party affiliations just to vote for him in the primaries. I don’t think anyone is doing that for any of the other candidates. Is 26% enough to lose it for him when their votes are divided between several other candidates?
Comment by Lawrence Krubner —
January 3, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Jim, it looks like you were right about Huckabee. However, you also said Hilliary had the whole thing wrapped up, and now it looks like maybe you were wrong. Do you have any interest in revising your bets at this point? Or are you sticking with Hilliary as the eventual winner?