What changed was I’m running for president. ~Mike Huckabee, on the latest of his flip-flops (in this case, on the Cuba embargo)

Here Romney boasts about the positive nature of his weak anti-Huckabee attack ad.  I’m sorry, but when you’re running against someone who has stratospheric favourability ratings you really have to do more than draw “contrasts” in a good-natured way while emphasising just how wonderful your opponent is on other issues.  Immigration activists seem to be gravitating towards Huckabee despite his record, which some of them must know about already, and they are doing so in surprisingly large numbers.  When your opponent is receiving the endorsement of the Minutemen, you cannot effectively get to his right on immigration.  You have already lost that battle.  Fiscal conservatism and tax policy are Romney’s strengths with Iowa voters, but these are not the kinds of issues that drive large numbers of caucus-goers.

National Review‘s endorsement of Romney is not all that surprising.  It seems to me that they have come to the conclusion you would expect, given that they, like many others, mistake Romney for someone who is “conservative” and “viable.”  As of right now, he doesn’t seem to be viable among Republicans outside New England and maybe Michigan, much less with anyone else, and he is probably the weakest general election candidate of the leading five.  As for his conservatism, well, I have said many times what I think about his dubious claim to that label and I won’t repeat it here.  Nonetheless, this show of support makes sense for NR, and given the “viable conservative” stadard they’re using it is hard to see how they could have realistically chosen anyone else.  Thompson isn’t just non-viable at this point.  He’s an embarrassment of sorts.  The problems with McCain and Giuliani are obvious, and Huckabee’s galloping Gersonism should fill every conservative’s heart with dread.  I’m proudly supporting Ron Paul, and I am confident he would be a far better President than the one we will wind up having, but I would be kidding myself and all of you if I said I believed he was “viable” in a “win the Electoral College” sort of way.  The sorry thing about the GOP field this year is that you have some potentially viable candidates on one side and then you have the conservative candidates on the other side.  Then you have Romney, who will, if nominated, lead the GOP to a defeat reminiscent of Bob Dole’s loss or perhaps even worse.  You could make the argument that conservatives should ignore Romney’s blatant opportunism for the sake of winning the election, but I am telling you that Romney cannot deliver that victory.  There is the “Mormon factor,” but it isn’t just that.  After the last almost seven years of President Bush, the electorate will want someone trustworthy as President, and I don’t think Romney fits that description.       

Responding to the endorsement editorial, Michael makes some interesting points in a new post, developing an idea that he mentioned to me the other day:

Among my small circle, we are now wondering: perhaps Romney is the best viable choice. Not for any of the reasons National Review cites, but for his obvious cravenness. After years of suffering under Bush’s politics-of-conviction, I begin to warm to a guy who seems like he would never allow his approval ratings to go into the  20s in order to maintain the delusion that American military power can transform the Middle East into Middlebury, Conneticutt. I know that a lot of people are looking to Obama or Huckabee for a politician they can believe in. I’d rather have a guy who has no core whatsoever, whose every belief is negotiable. The last thing we need in this country is steadfast leadership from a member of our political class.

I take Michael’s point, and we could certainly stand to have a Republican more interested in normalcy rather than nostrums, to borrow a slightly hokey phrase from the election that, if Brooks is to be believed, the 2008 cycle is starting to resemble.  I don’t think people should “believe in” politicians, and not just because they will always be disappointed.  It is fundamentally unhealthy for free people to “believe in” their governors.  The one thing that keeps me from worrying too much about this aspect of the enthusiasm for Ron Paul is that I know that he would also embrace the sentiment of the Psalmist’s exhortation, “Trust ye not in princes.”  Ron Paul makes it clear time and again that the campaign is not about him, but is focused on advancing constitutional principles and liberty, and it is the principles that make the campaign successful.  With Obama and Huckabee, it is quite clear that personality and biography are driving almost everything, and these are the only reasons why people are flocking to their standards.  Looked at this way, Romney is refreshingly uninspiring, but then most people who are regularly compared to robots would be.    

The thing that bothers me about Romney, aside from the sheer dishonesty and naked ambition his candidacy represents, is that he is not a conviction politician, but he pretends to be one and tries to make his newfound convictions into one of his virtues.  If he were just an opportunist who bends whichever way the wind blows, that would be one thing, but the insufferable part is that he expects you to acknowledge that he now has deeply-held convictions that give him the authority to ridicule other candidates’ records as lacking in conservative principle.  The ad he has aired recently where he pretends that he was some tower of principled strength, never yielding to the pressures of the moment, is an insult to our intelligence.  Granted, you typically don’t win elections by advertising your utterly unprincipled power-seeking, but it seems to me that an opportunist should try to center his candidacy around things that he can still back up with evidence.  Romney actually does have some experience as a competent manager, and he should stick to that.  He has insisted that he is also a thoroughgoing conservative, and this is simply incredible.

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.