Huckabee calls for a changing of the guard:

Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.

While this is right as far as it goes, Huckabee really must want to go down in a blaze of glory if he insists on saying it out loud in front of everyone.

It’s too late to make a prediction for the Seahawks-Packers game, which has understandably turned into a rout of Seattle, but I will go out on a limb and say that the Jaguars are going to surprise some people (though probably not those who have been following Jacksonville closely) and defeat the Patriots with their running game 35-24.  Tomorrow, the Colts and Cowboys win by at least a touchdown.

Update: Jaguars lead 7-0 after first drive. Never mind.  My prediction also cursed the Colts and the Cowboys in their games.

Via Hotline:

MI State Rep. Fulton Sheen (R) announced at a rally today that he’s officially withdrawing his endorsement of Mitt Romney in order to back Mike Huckabee. Sheen, who said he’d served as a MI state chair for Romney (trying to confirm), pointed to the FairTax and his support of the MI FairTax ballot proposal, which Huckabee backs, as the main motivator for his decision.

Detroit Free Pressconfirms the switch, adding another reason for Sheen’s change of heart: because Huckabee stands for “for the Biblical, Judeo-Christian values on which this country was founded.”

Contrary to what you read here yesterday, Romney is apparently not in such bad shape in Michigan.  Rasmussen has him leading 26-25 over McCain with Huckabee in third at 17%.  The breakdown of evangelical and Catholic votes is exactly what you would expect.  Huckabee gets a healthy 32% of evangelicals, but just 4% of Catholics, which is low even for him.  Among Catholics, he is in sixth place behind Fred Thompson and Ron Paul.  Romney leads among every non-evangelical religious group.  The good news for Huckabee is that he was never expected to be able to win a state like Michigan, at least not at this stage, so a respectable third behind Romney, the “native son,” and McCain would not be such a bad outcome.  The only one who must win is Romney, and he seems to be in a good position to do it.  However, Romney’s position is once again deceptively strong: 58% of his supporters say they might change their mind or are unsure about supporting him, which is higher than for any other candidate.  McCain and Huckabee have pretty well locked down over half of their current supporters, which still leaves many impossible to pin down for certain.  Things could shift pretty quickly in the next couple of days. 

Curiously, Romney wins among both conservatives and liberals, but loses big to McCain among “moderates.”  As you would also expect, Huckabee also does best among the <$20K earners.  He also does well among the $65-75K earners, but he is actually leading among the lowest income group.  In every other income group, he trails Romney and McCain, each of whom gets about a quarter to a third of each income group except for the lowest one.  To give you a sense of how strange a mix Ron Paul supporters are, his best support (12%) comes from $20-40K earners and the $100K earners.  McCain's support generally increases as you go into the higher income groups, while Romney's fluctuates back and forth. Some marginally good news for Paul supporters: Paul shows some added strength in Michigan, now at 8%, ahead of Giuliani and almost tied with Thompson.  It is a dubious distinction to be ahead of someone who has abandoned the state and almost tied with the guy who isn't trying very hard up north, but it is better than previous polls I have seen.  The problem is that most of his support comes from non-GOP voters (he is second only to McCain in non-GOP support), which obviously doesn't help in later closed primaries.

Those days are over. In about eight weeks Giuliani has gone from frontrunner to second-tier candidate. ~Matthew Continetti

—————-

Giuliani says he isn’t worried. Conceding New Hampshire, he said, “Maybe we’ve lulled our opponents into a false sense of confidence now.”

Yeah, and maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

No, I don’t mean the amusingly cynical movie of the same name.  Coming back to that Florida poll, I should note the obvious: the vast majority of Floridians live in the center and south of the state, and these are the regions where McCain and Giuliani do best, where Romney is only moderately strong and where Huckabee is weakest.  Huckabee has to hope for high turnout in the less-populated northwest where he has overwhelming support, and obviously needs weak turnout in the big urban centers and the I-95 corridor where all three of his rivals have more support than he does.  The three or four-way split field is allowing Huckabee to live off the land and free media, relying on this regional backing from core supporters, but if he cannot start gaining ground among urban voters he may prove to be as limited a candidate as his critics originally claimed.  This would be somewhat surprising to me in some ways, but in another sense it isn’t at all surprising: Huckabee is doing best in that part of Florida that is still culturally most like the rest of the South, and he is weakest in the most multiethnic and polyglot part of the state.  Of course, a strong showing in Michigan and/or South Carolina could jumble the race in Florida yet again, so we’ll have to see.

Noted by several others, the results in Iowa show that Huckabee does not do very well with Catholic voters.  Crosstabs from this old Rasmussen Florida poll from last month suggest that there may be something to this.  In a poll where Huckabee registered 27% support, 17% of Catholics backed him, while receiving a whopping 46% from evangelicals.  Meanwhile, Giuliani received the second-largest share of Catholic support (26%), while Romney was backed by the same percentage of Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants (29%).  This has been the pattern in other states as well.

Rod, who endorsed Huckabee yesterday, said something in an earlier post that came to mind as I was thinking about this question:

For me, the Huck-as-change-agent theme comes down to this: an America led by a President Huckabee, and a conservative movement whose leader he is, might be an America and a conservatism where more people will read Wendell Berry — and for that matter, Catholic social thought.

If this pattern of limited Catholic support for Huckabee keeps up, barring the unlikely elevation of Michael Gerson in a future Huckabee Administration (there’s a scary thought), there may not be many who are supporting Huckabee who will be promoting Catholic social thought in any form.  More to the point, if this pattern continues, Huckabee probably cannot win a general election.

On one level, it makes perfect sense that Catholic voters would not respond well to Huckabee.  As a conservative Southern Baptist, he might appear to be no different from the Baptists who insist that Catholics are not Christians.  Catholic voters might conclude that the people who are voting against Romney and for Huckabee on account of religion may very well also view their church as a “cult,”  so they are withholding their support from Huckabee for that reason?  To the extent that the media have explained his political success, for the most part correctly, in terms of evangelical support, and to the extent that the media have, less accurately, talked up the anti-Mormon factor in discussing his campaign, it would not be hard for voters who know relatively little  about Huckabee to assume that he is simply the evangelical candidate with all of the possible anti-Catholic baggage that might entail.  On the other hand, why Catholic voters should respond so much more strongly to Romney is a puzzle.  He cannot claim any nominal or cultural connection to Catholicism, as Giuliani can, and his pro-life views are such a recent development that I find it hard to believe that he is winning over Catholic voters on this alone.  Is there some boomerang pro-Romney sympathy vote that has emerged in reaction against anti-Mormonism?  Perhaps Catholic voters are drawn to support the candidate who appears to be facing a “religious issue,” who currently hails from Massachusetts and who has invoked JFK’s speech on religion ad nauseam?

P.S.  The latest SurveyUSA Florida poll, while not giving any figures according to religious affiliation, confirms the pattern from the earlier poll.  Just look at the geographic distribution of Huckabee’s support: 40% in the northwest (the heavily evangelical Panhandle, including Pensacola) and 8% in the southeast (Miami-Dade and its surroundings).  Huckabee receives decent, but hardly overwhelming, support in the other regions of Florida (17-18%). Conversely, Giuliani fares best in the southeast (25%) and does horribly in the northwest (2%).  Romney runs strongest in northeast Florida (23%), receives 15% in SE Florida and receives only 8% in the northwest. Since Florida has something like 2.25 million Catholics living there, this could be a major hurdle for Huckabee (assuming that he does well enough in the rest of January that Florida still matters to his chances).  Huckabee’s other, unrelated Florida problem?  The elderly.  Voters 65+ are the core of McCain’s strength down there, while Huckabee leads among the youngest cohort and runs competitively in every other group.  Among the 65+ he is getting slaughtered by McCain 38-11, and he runs fourth overall among the eldest voters.  Somebody doesn’t like all that talk about the greatest generation being the one yet to be born.

Shat mart kose yis earimen hasrat’ im  Many men say I am yearning for my beloved.
Leyli-Mejloom el che es halov Even Medjloom of Leyla was never in such a state.
Mart piti hamasha beranet tndghe  One must always be careful with your mouth.
Khosk’ is asum arakavor-masalov You are speaking with fables and hints.

Lezoot kaghtsr’ unis shakar or shartin  You have a sweet tongue, sugar and honey.
Mazirt’ rehan e patetats’ vardin, Your hair is basil, wrapping around the rose.
Ki zardarats’ tesnim hit tsaghkazardin Let me look at you decorated at the flower festival,
Hagil elis zar-zarbaben khas alov Youwear silk with red satin.

 

Ea indzi kortsrek’, ea me ban arek’,   Either leave me or do something
Khpetsek’, me tighes me nshan arek’, Beat me, put a mark on me somewhere
Tekooz estoo hama karaspan arek’  If only for this, stone me to death.
Chim kshtanum gozali hit khosalov I am not satisfied with speaking with the beautiful one.

 

Ajab vonts’ dimanam yis eschap darin,  How can I take so much pain?
Achkemes artasunk’ doos goooka arin,  From my eyes come tears of blood.
Orn ir shabatov karot im earin,  Daily I am yearning for my beloved.
Vontsor gharib blbool vardin tisalov.  Like the wandering nightingale looking at the rose.

 

Khlkis tarav jadookarin chim tesi.  Whoever took my mind, I did not see the magician.
Bemurvatin, beighrarin chim tesi.  I didn’t see the ruthless and unfaithful one.
Sayat-Noven asats’ earin chim tesi.  Sayat Nova says, I didn’t see the beloved.
Man im gali artasunk’s husalov.  I am walking, pouring forth my tears.

Translated by Larison

For those tired of political commentary, here is a break: Mitwa from Lagaan.  As a bonus, here is Ghanan Ghanan also.

Jennifer Stec, a member of the Northside Family and Friends Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, says she has stopped writing checks to national evangelical groups such as Pat Robertson’s 700 Club. Instead, her donations go to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee [bold mine-DL].

Stec said she is backing the ordained Baptist minister in her state’s Jan. 19 Republican presidential primary because television evangelist Robertson “sacrificed Christian principles” by endorsing the candidacy of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who supports abortion and gay rights. ~Bloomberg

So that Robertson endorsement is really doing wondersforRudy, wouldn’t you say?