October 22, 2007
Huckabee and the Social Con Leadership
Rev. Mike Huckabee's rise in the national polls is undeniable. From early August to now, he has moved from 1 percent and change to over 6 percent. Though a 5 percent move may not seem like a groundswell, remember that "top tier candidate" Romney was hovering around 9 percent two weeks ago. Thus, Romney is a few points ahead of Huckabee, but they're in the same statistical "neighborhood."
Huckabee's message certainly seems to be catching on within the social conservative rank-and-file. And yet, despite the fact that Huckabee's the only clergyman in the race, his fellow Christian leaders seem to be more interested in boosting the Mormon businessman as against the Baptist minister, despite the fact that Romney's pro-life and "family values" bona fides are in serious question, while Huckabee's are not in question at all.
This situation has puzzled me for a while now. Over at RedState, Erick Erickson suggests an explanation:
The social conservatives do not want to rally around Huckabee because he is as distasteful to fiscalcons as Rudy is to socons. Even Tony Perkins, the head of FRC, said he hoped the social conservative candidate would be palatable to the fiscal conservatives out there. Huckabee is not.I think Erick may very well be on to something here. Policy-wise, Huckabee is, of the current GOP contenders the embodiment of "compassionate conservativism"--i.e., big government social conservatism. Our current "compassionate conservative" administration has been good to the social cons in terms of policy enactments, but it has nearly destroyed the traditional Reagan coalition of social cons and fiscal cons, and the social con leaders know it.
The ambivalence toward Huckabee may very well reflect an acknowledgment that a whole lot of fiscal cons will not lift a finger to place another "compassionate" fox in the executive henhouse, and fifty percent of a shared pie is, at the end of the day, better than 100% of no pie.
