I don’t define those events as you do. And I don’t think you have any right whatsoever to establish yourselves as the arbiter of what constitutes an event. I will do that in a way that reflects the best needs and purposes of the people who are working with me. Because as I see it, every time somebody comes forward and takes the pledge, that’s an Iowa event. ~Alan Keyes

Unleash weapons of mass instruction. ~Mike Huckabee

You have to be kidding me.  No wonder he received the New Hampshire NEA endorsement.

This is a shorter, simplified, terminologically flawed version of what I was saying last month:

The plutocrats got showered with riches, and the theocrats got lines from hymns dropped into speeches.

More than that, once the GOP met its electoral reckoning the so-called “theocrats,” which the rest of us on earth know as the social conservatives, were blamed for having wrecked the GOP, which, so we were told, they had so thoroughly dominated during the Bush years.  This was a classic error of identifying the base of the party’s electoral strength with the control of its leadership and agenda.  Having attributed to them supreme power over the party, it was inevitable that the media, both mainstream and conservative, would wrongfully tag them as scapegoats for the party’s failure, just as they had falsely described them as the masters of the party.  As Huckabee’s performance at the “values voters” summit and the Huckabee surge have shown, many of the rank and file social conservatives are not following the movement leaders and activists to endorse candidates deemed safe or acceptable by the establishment. 

Indeed, the one thing that makes me think Huckabee can’t be all bad is that the party and movement establishment leaders seem to loathe and fear him, but I am under no illusions that just because he is some kind of anti-establishment figure that he is therefore also a desirable one.  In most respects, he is Bush’s natural heir and would be another Bush, but a Bush without the corporate ties.  Were he somehow nominated and elected, this would not ultimately herald the movement of the GOP in a more populist direction, but would set the stage for internecine GOP warfare as conservatives would turn against him quickly and seek to oust him as progressives tried to do with Carter.  The Carter parallels are already overused, I know, but they seem eerily appropriate. 

Lately, I have been very down on Huckabee, since he now has a decent shot at prolonging his campaign into the spring as a real contender.  But I did say a few weeks ago:

I don’t like Huckabee, and I don’t want him to do well, but both he and Paul drive different parts of the establishment crazy and could throw the entire race into disarray, which would be a good thing for many reasons.   

Well, we have disarray now, and it is good that Huckabee is challenging the notion that blatant opportunism and money can dominate our political process without any resistance.  Unfortunately, what he offers in its place (feel-good quips and charismatic, personality-driven politics) is worrisome for different reasons.  I still don’t want him to win, but I think his candidacy may make the eventual nominee, whoever it is, have to take social conservatives much more seriously and offer them the kinds of concessions and influence that their leaders seem unwilling to extract on their behalf.

This line from Waldman is a summary of part of what I was saying yesterday:

This primary battle is a symptom, not a cause, of a crumbling conservative coalition.

He shows a Wikipedia-level appreciation of other religions, admiring “the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims” and “the ancient traditions of the Jews.” These vapid nostrums suggest his innermost conviction of America’s true faith. A devout Christian vision emerges of a U.S. society that is in fact increasingly diverse. ~Roger Cohen

I don’t think the speech presented a “devout Christian vision,” and indeed he was at pains to present anything but that.  The entire speech was premised on arguing for pluralism and against religious homogeneity or the cultural hegemony of any particular religion, boiling down the many religions to our “great moral inheritance” and a vague and minimally demanding theism.  It was a typical expression of the sort of superficial, smorgasbord approach to diversity that we have all grown up with in America.  For some reason, paeans to diversity seem to require “vapid nostrums,” because we must find something about every group that is distinctive yet not the cause of some offense among another group, which usually ends up leaving us with not much to say about them.  Had a non-Mormon given the speech, you could imagine him saying, “I admire the impeccable politeness of the Mormons.”  After all, to say anything in greater detail would be, by the standards of the speech, to establish a “religious test”!  

Romney could hardly have said, “I admire the spiritual journey of the Muslim who struggles in the path of God,” since this would mean that he is also admiring the mujahideen, so he was reduced to saying something meaningless.  Even Wikipedia-level appreciation would have offered more depth of understanding of other religions.  What was most disingenuous about this part of the speech was that Romney claimed to admire these elements so much that he wished they were part of his religion!  When he hears this speech, Cohen encounters the drippy multiculturalism of a religious studies seminar and mistakes it for religious militancy.

Roger Cohen makes a correction to a previous column of his that I criticised:

I wrote last week of the Tudor-Stuart alternation; I meant succession.

Romney went negative this week, airing an ad in Iowa hitting Huckabee on tuition breaks for illegal immigrants, but the aforementioned aide suggested it was far too tepid. “Romney has to turn mother’s picture to the wall and really start beating the crap out of guy.” ~Tom Bevan

A bit crude, perhaps, but I agree with the assessment.  The ad was very tepid.  It was so tepid that Romney makes a point of bragging about how neutral and  non-judgemental it was, as he did again in his Today Show appearance.

Thus the scandal of Jesus and Satan being brothers is one based entirely on extrapolation and syllogism. Yes, because both Jesus and Satan were created as part of the offspring of God, you could say they’re related, or even brothers. ~Ryan Bell

In other words, because Mormonism holds a doctrine similar to Arianism (i.e., that the Son is created), what Huckabee said is obviously horribly wrong, except that it’s actually correct.  I don’t think anyone will be hiring this guy to do spin control.  You do have to admire the gall of bringing Hitler into the debate.  That is always a good way to persuade and win new friends.

But I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way, and I think people will reject that. ~Mitt Romney

Romney said that on The Today Show in response to Huckabee’s question in the Chafets profile.  David Kuo made the right point about this:

I’m sorry but I am really confused about all of this. Since when is asking a question about someone’s religion attacking it?? This is bizarre.

Kuo referred to Romney’s appearance as “pathetic.” 

I am obviously just about as strongly opposed to Romney as you can be, but no one can possibly confuse me for a fan of Huckabee, either.  I think Romney’s Mormonism is something that is legitimate for voters to take into account, but I also know that Huckabee has stated publicly time and again that he thinks it should be irrelevant.  (Here he makes the statement as clearly as anyone could possibly want.)  As a matter of fairness and accuracy, it seems wrong to impute to Huckabee the views and motives of those who are going to vote against Romney on account of his religion unless there is evidence that he actually holds such views and has such motives.  Huckabee has plenty of flaws, all of which are amply detailed in the same Chafets profile.  Ironically, by focusing on this one sentence, the media and Romney are giving Huckabee an easy out  on his genuinely worrisome record and policy views.  By protesting about one sentence, which they must regard in itself as an irrelevancy, and ignoring the serious flaws in Huckabee’s ideas (or lack thereof in certain cases), the media are actually empowering the candidate who stands to benefit from the anti-Mormon reaction among Republican voters.  Whatever Romney may or may not have accomplished with his speech last week, he stands to lose by embracing the rhetoric of the oppressed minority (which, if you haven’t noticed, does not exactly win over conservative voters).     

The small but growing effort to tar Huckabee as some sort of sectarian campaigner or incipient theocrat strikes me as wrong on the merits and seriously counterproductive for those making the argument.  If I am a caucus-goer or a primary voter who has not firmly committed to another candidate, I could very easily see Mitt Romney as someone working with the mainstream media to accuse a social conservative candidate of bigotry.  Think about how that appears to a conservative audience.  It does not make Romney look better to them, let me tell you.  

It seems to me that you give people the benefit of the doubt in these cases.  Huckabee was probably innocently asking the question he asked, and he has since gone out of his way to make it clear that he thinks that the issue shouldn’t be part of the campaign.  He has had opportunities to say publicly whether he thought Mormonism was Christian or not, and he demurred.  He could have very easily said something else, but chose not to do so.  If you find all the talk about Mormonism disconcerting, you really don’t want to get things to the point where Huckabee feels compelled to start answering those questions by labeling Huckabee, pretty much baselessly, as a “sectarian” who is playing “the Mormon card.” 

More bizarre yet is Romney’s reaction.  The question that Huckabee asked actually reflects Mormon teaching with a reasonable degree of accuracy.  (You can say that it takes this view out of context and implies something that the LDS church does not teach, but I think this is a reach.)  If, in fact, Huckabee doesn’t know much about Mormonism, his question might reflect something that he has heard over the years and was asking in the natural give and take of conversation.  Now you can argue that he shouldn’t have said it, or you can argue that Chafets shouldn’t have included it, but Romney’s reaction doesn’t really make sense unless he finds the tenets of his own religion so embarrassing and strange that the mere mention of them constitutes an “attack” or unless you are a candidate, as Romney is, in need of something, anything, you can use to tear down your opponent.  Of course these beliefs are a political liability, as we all know, but if Romney believed what he said last Thursday that those who think these things matter “underestimate the American people” he cannot possibly see a mere question as an attack worthy of condemnation. 

Pluralism doesn’t mean that we all become silent about matters of great importance.  You do not really have a free society if asking questions is considered an assault.  More basically, you need something more substantial than this if you’re going to charge someone with attacking your religion. 

Ron Paul has raised more than $11 million for the fourth quarter, and right now needs a little over $600,000 to meet his goals for the quarter.  The Tea Party on Sunday should be able to break that barrier in a matter of hours.

Well, that was … thoroughly uninteresting. And that is fantastic, spectacular news for new Republican front-runner Mike Huckabee, and a giant missed opportunity for Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and all the rest of the would-be Iowa contenders. ~Rick Klein

That may be overstating things a bit, but it was the last debate before the caucuses and the last chance to expose Huckabee to the kind of pressure his rivals need to put on him if they expect him to slip up or lose popular support.  If Klein is right that Huckabee and Paul were the winners coming out of the debate, that can’t be anything but bad news for Thompson, who needs Huckabee to implode and who also needs Ron Paul to go away.  Fourth place or single digit results and Thompson is pretty much finished. 

On the other hand, the sheer lack of organisation and money that Huckabee has, as we are reminded in the Times magazine piece today, has to catch up to him at some point.  Huckabee’s poor fundraising is frankly a little bit surprising.  Granted, he has raised his national profile in just the last few weeks, which hasn’t allowed much time to raise funds, but how is it that he is getting such massive support in Iowa and noticeable support everywhere else in the country and can’t translate that into some real funding right now?  As this article about Huckabee’s daughter (and natonal field coordinator) reminds us, they won’t have a campaign bus until next week. 

The lack of funding is demonstrated very simply by the Huckabee campaign’s own site.  His goal for Dec. 15th is $1.5 1.15 million.  He needs about $300,000 in the next three days to reach this fairly extremely modest goal.

P.S.  A thought occurred to me when I was reading Chafets’ profile and came across the part where Huckabee selected T.G.I. Friday’s for their lunch (a selection Chafets refused).  Someone has made the crack about Huckabee that his name sounds like that of a chain restaurant, and I read the Chafets’ piece after watching Amy Sullivan and Rod Dreher’s bloggingheads last night (in which Rod invokes Applebee’s America).  Then I saw the reference to Huckabee’s preferred chain restaurant.  Somehow that struck me as the perfect symbol for Huckabee’s campaign.  On a more substantive level, the chain restaurant connection reminded me of something else.    This made me wonder whether Huckabee is the ideal candidate of Applebee’s America.  The points from that book that seem to apply to Huckabee’s success thus far are these:

• People make choices about politics, consumer goods, and religion with their hearts, not their heads.
• Successful leaders touch people at a gut level by projecting basic American values that seem lacking in modern institutions and missing from day-to-day life experiences.
• The most important Gut Values today are community and authenticity. People are desperate to connect with one another and be part of a cause greater than themselves. They’re tired of spin and sloganeering from political, business, and religious institutions that constantly fail them.

Of course, the idea that Huckabee is “authentic” while others are not is an idea that Huckabee has tried hard to cultivate.  It seems to me that it isn’t true, but in the same way that Clinton claimed that he felt your pain Huckabee can certainly make people feel as if it is true and make them feel that he understands their predicaments. 

Update: Huckabee is now also running in a close second place in Wisconsin of all places, up seventeen points from three months ago.