Remember the Newsweek Iowa poll that everyone sniffed at and said couldn’t be accurate?  (I should add that it seemed reasonable to question such a huge gap opening up so rapidly in Iowa, and at the time the objections made sense.)  It turns out that it was probably much more on the mark than anyone expected.  Rasmussen, one of the most reliable polling outfits, has the Iowa race as Huckabee 39, Romney 23, and the rest of the field remaining in single digits.  The crosstabs have some remarkable numbers: Huckabee wins conservatives 59-11.  This is bizarre, not least since Huckabee is not a conservative in so many ways, but then it is bizarre that he is getting endorsements from the Minutemen.  More understandably, he wins among moderates 36-28 and even picks up a few liberal Republican votes, most of which otherwise go to McCain and (curiously) Thompson.  Huckabee carries every age group and every income group and he leads among both evangelical and mainline Protestants.  He loses only among Catholics, unmarried voters and those who religious affiliation is “other.”  Among those certain they will participate in the caucuses, Huckabee leads 40-22.  Whatever these voters say is their most important issue, they back Huckabee by a wide margin.  Voters who say the war is most important back Huckabee 39-19 over Romney; immigration, 36-27; national security, 43-25.  This one will both horrify and amuse those of us who know about Huckabee’s string of ethics problems in office: for voters who think government ethics and corruption are the most important issues, he leads the field 56-16 over Ron Paul, with 11% going to Romney.   Huckabee’s fav/unfav is 81-16.  That’s virtually unheard of.

At Huckabee’s side today was a man named Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, who was on hand to endorse Huckabee. ~Noam Scheiber

I can’t express to you all how little sense this makes.  It’s baffling, like so much else associated with Mike Huckabee lately.  The only thing more bizarre would have been if Gilchrist had endorsed McCain.  How does the founder of the Minutemen endorse Huckabee?  What parallel universe have we fallen into that this is happening?  I mean, Gilchrist essentially has to ignore everything that the man said or did regarding immigration for the last decade.  Apparently the take-away lesson is that shameless pandering works.  Before much longer maybe Huckabee will land Tancredo’s endorsement. 

Ryan Lizza’s article on the GOP and immigration has this telling section:

Huckabee is the latest victim of the Republican shift on the immigration issue. We talked on what should have been a happy day for Huckabee. According to at least one poll, he had taken the lead from Romney in Iowa, and was enjoying a sustained burst of positive media coverage. “Oh, man, it’s been unbelievable,” he said in his winning, Gomer Pyle-like voice. “We’re up in New Hampshire and I’ve got more press coming to the events than I’ve got people. I’m not kidding. It’s unbelievable. We have so many people coming we can’t fit them in the places.” But Huckabee’s excitement was tempered by Romney’s persistent attacks on his immigration record as governor of Arkansas, and he seemed to be grappling with the intensity of the question among Republicans. “It does appear to be the issue out here wherever we are,” he told me. “Nobody’s asked about Iraq—doesn’t ever come up. The first question out of the box, everywhere I go—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, it doesn’t matter—is immigration. It’s just red hot, and I don’t fully understand it [bold mine-DL].”

Of course he doesn’t fully understand it.  He has spent his entire political career as a governor demonising and denouncing opponents of illegal immigration.  He employed every heavy-handed smear available to oppose the policies that he now clasps tightly to his bosom.  He was the Lindsey Graham of governors, and yet all he has to do is propose the kind of policy he would have never supported as governor and suddenly all is forgiven and forgotten (if it was ever known). At least Romney had the decency to alter his position on this early in the campaign.  Huckabee may be even less scrupulous in this respect than the fraud.

As I wrote in the 9/24 TAC (sorry, not online), commenting on Huckabee’s “evolving” ideas on immigration and his second-place showing at Ames:

Yet only two years ago, as governor, he denounced a bill in the Arkansas legislature that would have prohibited state benefits for illegal immigrants as “un-Christian” and “un-American.”

If Huckabee believed that then, he is bowing to political necessity and sacrificing his principles–something he said shouldn’t be done when he spoke at the “values” voters summit–and he is doing so in the most transparently opportunistic way possible. 

P.S.  Michelle Malkin shares my stunned disbelief.

James said in response to my latest Obama post:

I think the idea is that Hillary Clinton is really a sinner and a tyrant, and likes it. What she stands for, in that light, is really neither here nor there. Barack Obama may be a rank amateur with horrible ideas, but at least he deserves to run for President and deserves to govern if he wins.

All right, I suppose that sums up the visceral loathing of Hillary Clinton on the right pretty well.  (One does wonder where this great anti-tyrannical zeal has been for the past few years, but no matter.)  It is still striking that the way so many partisans and pundits choose to express this loathing is by portraying Clinton as the ueber-radical and the embodiment of all those things about 1968 that conservatives generally resent or oppose.  The core of this argument seems to be: Hillary is a horrible human being who should never be entrusted with power, while Obama is just a progressive politician.  So the problem with Hillary isn’t that she’s “polarising” or that she will rehash old fights, but that she is Lady MacFaust who has no soul.  Well, if you want to put it that way, I don’t see how you could look at her candidacy with anything but total dread.  I have to say, as steeped as I was growing up in the anti-Clinton view (and we really loathed these people, let me tell you), I find Obama’s worldview more dangerous because it is even more ambitious than Bush’s and his candidacy threatens to co-opt and silence many opponents of interventionism by making them think that they have found a candidate who espouses their view. 

Finally, I would submit that no one deserves to run for President, or rather the entire language of “deserving” is undesirable because it has usually been employed to explain why the next elder statesman in line gets to have “his turn” at being the nominee.  By that old standard, no one is less “deserving” than Obama, but the entire conception that someone deserves to run for President makes the process seem like a reward or a treat rather than the fulfillment of a civic duty.

Rothenburg points to an unexpectedly competitive race in OH-05:

The reliably Republican nature of Ohio’s 5th district would seem to make it an unlikely target for Democrats, but a target it is in Tuesday’s special election.

And while political operatives from both parties scramble to downplay expectations, there is more than enough evidence to conclude that the race to fill the seat of the late Rep. Paul Gillmor (R) is going down to the wire.

Republican Bob Latta, who should, under normal circumstances, win the race rather easily, finds himself in an uncomfortably competitive race against Democrat Robin Weirauch, who already has lost two bids for Congress in the district.

To get some perspective on the district, it was solid Bush country in 2004 and Republicans have won the House race there handily for over a decade.  Democratic vote totals have been increasing in recent cycles (Democratic turnout in the district in ’06 was higher than it was in ’04, which is pretty remarkable).  Republicans ought to have the advantage in a special election in a traditionally Republican district, but the fact that the NRCC is worried about the district tells us that the Republican position in Ohio may be worse than even I thought. 

P.S.  Politico‘s coverage reminds us that the GOP has controlled this district since 1938, which you can see in the entry about the district linked above.  The Politico article also notes that this district gave Bush 61% of the vote.  As Rothenburg mentioned in his article, the NRCC is using up a lot of its small reserve of money to protect the seat.  It can’t afford to fritter away on districts that are supposed to be safe.  The article also very nearly buries one of the most striking pieces of evidence that Weirauch may win:

But a poll conducted for Latta’s campaign last week showed him trailing Weirauch by four points, according to a GOP operative. 

Update: Via DailyKos, Roll Callreports that local Republicans in northwest Ohio are upset with Bob Latta’s lackadaisacal campaigning.  There is also this story detailing the consequences of the bruising GOP primary fight, in which the Club waged one of its classic scorched-earth campaigns against the moderate Republican (who, it must be said, was tied into the Ohio GOP establishment with all the baggage that entails).  The supporters of the primary loser are none too pleased with Latta and may not show up on Tuesday.

The new CBS/NYT poll has a question (number 45) asking Democratic voters how Oprah’s support for Obama would affect their preferences: 1% said it would make them more likely to vote for him, while 14% said it would make them less likely.  I think this runs against the conventional wisdom that Oprah’s popularity is a boon to Obama.  She has probably deeply annoyed a small but significant number of people over the years.  Meanwhile, Bill Clinton, stupid gaffes about the war notwithstanding, remains a huge asset for Clinton: 44% are more likely to vote for her because he is in the campaign, and only 7% are less likely.  This idea of Clinton fatigue is very attractive to journalists and pundits who have an acute case of it themselves, but I think it simply doesn’t matter to most Democrats.

Incidentally, the CBS results confirm the national polling picture Rasmussen has been showing: 22 for Giuliani, 21 for Huckabee and 16 for Romney (this gives Romney a slightly better position than Rasmussen polling).  The poll asks whether or not “most people you know”‘ would vote for a Mormon, and 41% say no.  It remains the case that a majority of Americans don’t know Romney’s religion.  Romney’s Mormonism is one of those things that “everybody knows” if “everybody” includes journalists, pundits and bloggers, which is about as unrepresentative as it gets.

Public opinion on the war remains sharply negative.  59% believe that the war is going somewhat or very badly, against 37% who believe it is going well.   Mr. Bush’s approval rating on handling Iraq is very low (28%).  72% want American forces out of Iraq within 2 years, and 49% want them out in less than a year.  The standard Republican line, “as long as it takes,” gets a whopping 8%.  When given a range of options and deadlines, the public’s support for continuing the war beyond 2009 is extremely weak.  When given a binary “withdrawal vs. finish the mission” question, the latter gets significantly greater support because there are no intermdiate alternatives.  Despite favourable media coverage, 12% believe the “surge” has made things worse, and 40% believe it has had no impact.  60% believe that “neither side” is winning the war.  This cannot be blamed on the media any longer, since major newspapers and news channels have made a point of embracing the results of the “surge.”  The public has simply turned against the war.  A Republican Party running on an adamantly pro-war platform next year will get smashed. 

Immigration is a “very important” issue for 56% and “somewhat important” for 30%.  So that’s a fairly important issue.  28% favour a guest worker scheme, and 28% effectively favour deportation.  Huckabee’s support for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants’ children is the popular  position for all respondents, getting 58% support.  His position may do him no good in the primaries, but on this particular question he is apparently in line with a majority view.

P.S. The national polling is confirmed again by CNN/Opinion Research’s poll, which gives Giuliani 24, Huckabee 22 and Romney 16 (plus McCain-13, Thompson-10, and Paul-6).  Huckabee is running away with South Carolina right now, according to Survey USA: he has 30 to Romney’s 19.  Giuliani has collapsed to 13% and fourth place.

Appearing on National Public Radio’s light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis — and she didn’t know what it was.

“I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

So she consulted her best source. “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’ ” ~The Washington Post

Via Isaac Chotiner

Not exactly the best messenger for delivering warnings about Iran’s nuclear program and the dangers of WWIII breaking out, is she?  It’s enough to make you miss Tony Snow.

Audio here.

P.S.  She said later, “I feel like I’m in school everyday.”  I’m sure that’s true.

Huckabee’s inexplicable levels of support among restrictionist voters and a new ad on immigration have prompted a Romney counter-attack, but as attack ads go this must be one of the weakest I have ever seen.  Once he prefaces his attack by saying that Huckabee is a good family man who is pro-life and supports traditional marriage, Romey has basically given up trying to gain an advantage on social issues.  Trying to maintain “Iowa nice,” Romney’s ad doesn’t really deliver the killer blow and largely leaves Huckabee unscathed.  It is an ad that will interest journalists and wonks.  Meanwhile, Huckabee’s ad is very simple and says exactly what restrictionists want to hear (“no amnesty”), even though we know that Huckabee was perfectly content in the past with “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that these voters would regard as amnesty.  Of course, Romney is in an awkward position here, since attacking Huckabee’s credibility over his very recent apparent conversion on immigration reminds voters that Romney has had “evolving” views on just about everything.  As Mark Krikorian notes, Huckabee has once again endorsed the Pence compromise plan, which many conservatives see as little better than amnesty.   

But taking all that into account, why is Romney giving Huck the kid gloves treatment?  Mark Halperin lays out the perils of attacking Huckabee, on account of the personality-driven nature of his campaign.  For one thing:

Voters seem attracted to the man—not his issue positions, his record, or the quality (or lack thereof) of his campaign apparatus. Taking down Huckabee the Candidate means taking down Huckabee the Man, and that requires the kind of nuclear blast no one is yet inclined to launch. 

Meanwhile, the stories that remind voters that Huckabee is a minister who has said things about “taking back” America for Christ will work to Huckabee’s benefit, at least in those states where said re-taking is considered to be a desirable and perfectly normal goal by a broad swathe of Christian conservatives.  This is supposed to horrify secular voters, and maybe it does, but it just reconfirms for social conservatives that he has been one of them and on their side for a lot longer than many of the other current suitors.  Remarkably, when Huckabee has to drop past statements or reject old views, as he quickly did over the “AIDS quarantine” story, the label “flip-flopper” isn’t being used. 

When Huckabee changes his mind, it seems as if it is being treated as a genuine and reasonable change.  There is certainly a difference in how Huckabee’s attempts to trick voters and Romney’s deceptions are being treated iin the press.  To the extent that media bias is involved, the explanation seems clear: Romney was a liberal who has publicly repudiated his past views (whether he has “really” changed his mind or not is secondary), while Huckabee is a Gersonist and is therefore in many ways sympathetic to therapeutic-state liberalism.  In short, Romney has spurned liberals, but Huckabee flirts with some of their ideas and shows an openness to their policy ideas in certain areas.  Paradoxically, the conservative attack on Huckabee’s record and charges that he is a kind of progressive or Christian leftist may endear him to the mainstream media and prevent them from giving his record the thorough scrutiny that they ought to give it.  Meanwhile, progressive observers seem to be divided between thinking of Huckabee as a potentially tolerable Republican and regarding him as a loon with horrible policy ideas, and this ambivalent response is helping Huckabee maintain an aura of having conservative authenticity that he, in fact, does not possess.  (He has to keep running the phrase “authentic conservative” in all his Iowa ads because he knows that lack of authenticity is the thing that is killing Romney and would be killing him, too, if people knew anything about him.)  The very incoherence of his policy ideas is keeping his critics on left and right off-balance, because they can all find something in his grab-bag of proposals that they can support or at least tolerate.      

Update: Jonathan Martin has the Huckabee response to the ad, which makes effective use of Romney’s own reluctance to veto the very bill that he is bragging about vetoing in the ad.  At the time, Romney said, “I hate the idea of in any way making it more difficult for kids, even those who are illegal aliens, to afford college in our state.”  He hated the idea, sounding more Huckabathetic* than Huckabee, but has chosen to make the very same issue the chief defining difference between Huckabee and himself.  Point to Huckabee.

*I claim my rights for coining this and its related noun, Huckabathos.

My personal attitude, wholly consistent with that of my Church, is that I believe in peace on earth, good will to men, and that no country has a right to interfere in the internal affairs of any other country. I recognize the right of no church to ask armed intervention by this country in the affairs of another merely for the defense of the rights of a church. ~Governor Alfred E. Smith, c. 1927

Via Ross

The rights to which he was referring were those of Catholics in Mexico being persecuted by the revolutionary government.  Quite apart from anything else relating specifically to the “religious issue” Smith was addressing, I thought this statement deserved special attention.

He restates this conviction again at the end of the article:

I believe in the principled noninterference by this country in the internal affairs of other nations and that we should stand steadfastly against any such interference by whomsoever it may be urged.

I know that to some liberals, Barack Obama’s rhetorical style bespeaks a lack of commitment to progressive values.  I don’t see it that way. I’ve always seen it as a pretty transparent trick. He says he’s not one of those liberals, he doesn’t call people “wingnuts,” he understands the conservative point of view, blah blah blah, and then here comes his agenda of tax hikes, tons of new spending, ambitious carbon emissions curbs, less invading of other countries for no reason, gay equality, etc. And, remarkably, you keep seeing conservatives eat it up, discerning something incredibly “new” and “exciting” in a combination of conventional liberal policy views with vaguely conciliatory rhetoric. ~Matt Yglesias

This seems right, and I have thought that this was a trademark of Obama’s political style for some time now.  Last year I said:

All of this is supposed to show us that Obama is thoughtful, rather than callous, profound rather than predictable, but it does not.  It is the tactic of the man who says, “I appreciate your point of view,” when in fact he does not appreciate it and wants to neutralise your criticism by deflecting the question in an entirely different direction.  President Bush uses this same kind of tactic when he says, “Good and patriotic people hold this view, but I just strongly disagree.  I believe freedom transforms regions, burble, burble.”  He then concocts a straw man position, “Those who say that Iraq would be better off as a fetid wasteland filled with suicide bombers are simply wrong,” and declares victory. 

As I should have added at the time, Obama’s gift is to make what is otherwise obviously an aggressive rhetorical move seem completely inoffensive and almost boring.  It doesn’t sound like the sort of “red meat” denunciations that partisans want to hear, but it is all the more politically dangerous for conservatives because of that.  With perfunctory nods to the importance of family and personal responsibility, his God-talk and his rhetoric of American unity, Obama smuggles his very progressive record past those sentries who are always on the lookout for the next big left-winger.  People who somehow found the eminently centrist Howard Dean to be a scary and unhinged zealot find the genuinely left-wing Obama charming and amiable and (here’s the key word) unthreatening.  Thus, in the bizarre estimations of many Republicans, Hillary Clinton, the embodiment of DLC centrism and cynical difference-splitting, supposedly represents the radical left who will tear the country apart even more, while Obama represents a less polarising and more broadly appealing kind of politics, yet he is objectively to the left of everyone in the Democratic field (except on the war) aside from Dennis Kucinich and perhaps the current, latest incarnation of John Edwards.  Conservatives said of Dean, “Please nominate this man,” because they assumed a landslide victory for their side would follow.  Now, strangely, conservatives seem to be getting concerned that the Republican nominee will have to face Obama, even though this would probably represent the GOP’s best chance at political salvation.   

Obama also loves the device of invoking the line, “There are those who say…,” setting up the nameless, faceless opposition that he can characterise as he pleases, and now he has Oprah uttering the same kinds of remarks on his behalf.  Both men (i.e., Obama and Bush) have a habit of putting words in the mouths of their critics, and they enjoy evading criticism by ridiculing the credibility of the critic without addressing the merits of the criticism.  (You might say that a lot of people do this, but these two do it with a regularity that is noteworthy.)  For instance, when faced with criticism about his “half-baked” ideas on Pakistan policy, he used the critics’ mistakes on Iraq as his defense.  He is saying, “You can’t believe what these people say about foreign policy, so by default I win.”    

Progressives are annoyed with Obama over his Social Security position, and some probably take this as evidence that he is insufficiently progressive.  The short version is that they see Obama’s call to “save” Social Security from a coming crisis as a regurgitation of GOP talking points, and more than a few progressives have been pushing back, claiming that Social Security is not in danger.  This misunderstands why Obama is talking about Social Security in the way that he does.  Part of it is tactical–he needs to persuade many older voters to support him, especially in Iowa–but another part of it is his stated goal of “transforming” our politics.  Since Social Security is supposed to be too politically dangerous to touch, he wants to touch it to show that he is not bound by “conventional” wisdom or Beltway assumptions.  He makes similar arguments in defense of his foreign policy views, which he frames as very unconventional (which they are not), even in those cases (e.g., Iran, Pakistan) where his views are much more hawkish and aggressive–and much more in line with the worst elements of the foreign policy establishment–than his supporters’ views.