Huckabee Makes It Up
The indispensable Hugh Hewitt:
Since the rise of the New Deal, the GOP has never nominated a candidate who tried to use class warfare as a plank in his platform. Thus Mike Huckabee's long ball is a desperation move, not a strategy.More:
This is a good summary of the Huck 2.0 pitch, but Heilemann is wrong --more about Evangelicals than Huckabee-- when he says of Huck: "On topics of faith, he readily hits that dog-whistle pitch only Evangelicals can hear." The idea that evangelicals run to the sound of the whistle of one of their own is widely shared among the pundit class, but it is the worst sort of stereotyped bigotry, the same sort of assumption that famously prompted a Washington Post reporter in 1993 to brand evangelicals as "poor, uneducated and easily led." Mike Huckabee's skill as a presenter are real, but his appeal as a candidate pursuing an agenda is limited: It isn't an agenda that has ever been embraced by the GOP. Watch the evangelicals quietly head to the exits as they figure out what Mike Huckabee's platform is. The MSM has been covering for the former Arkansas governor because it loves a good crack-up, but evangelicals are not easily led, or subject to dog whistles.