The campaign of Mike Huckabee is interesting to me, and its not just because he wants to get rid of birthright citizenship(the idea that all children born in the U.S. regardless of the status of their parents are American citizens), its because of the damage that his candidacy could do to the Republican coalition.

This impending crisis of the coalition of the Republican party, made up of social conservatives and socially liberal fiscal conservatives has been brewing for some time. This is because the premise behind the coalition, that social conservative goals can be achieved through libertarian means, has not yielded the desired results for the religious right. The leaders of the conservative movement have been the libertarian minority, with the social conservative majority’s agenda taking a back seat. This crisis was detailed by Ryan Segar in his book, The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and Battle to Control the Republican Party, in that book he paints a not so rosy future for the Republican party, and I believe we are seeing that future come to pass.

You can hear the rhetoric of division coming from Mike Huckabee himself just two days ago in Michigan when he said,

“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “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.”and

“I know I have to earn that. But I also recognize that there is a unique kind of opportunity. For a long time, those of us who are people of faith are asked to support candidates who would come and talk to us. But rarely has there been one who comes from us.”

John A. Schmalzbauer, the Strong Chair of Protestant Studies at Missouri State University had this to say,

“It’s saying, ‘You’ve been shut out. You’ve voted for people in the past who’ve said they represent you. Why not get somebody that’s one of you?’ ” Schmalzbauer said. “It’s a kind of religious populism that goes along with economic populism.”

Howard Fineman of Newsweek has stylized this, “The Huckabee Problem” when he states this,

Republicans and their secular conservatives allies are distraught at the thought of Huckabee as the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee. They couch their fears in terms of secular issues: his spending record as governor, his advocacy of a national sales tax, his confusion about the location of Pakistan. Privately, however, what worries the insiders is that Blue and Purple America will run shrieking from a fellow—no matter how media-savvy and just-plain-folks he seems to be—who does not believe in the science of evolution but who does believe that the Bible is pretty close to literally true.

This was also seen in the latest Republican debate by Fred Thompson when he said this,

“On the one hand,” he said, “you have the Reagan revolution, you have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security. And the other hand, you have the direction that Governor Huckabee would take us in. He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies.”

and then

Mr. Thompson then lit into Mr. Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor who won the Iowa caucus, for wanting to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, for supporting what he called “taxpayer-funded programs for illegals” and for wanting to sign a law restricting smoking.“That’s not the model of the Reagan coalition, that’s the model of the Democratic Party,” he said.

Jonah Goldberg of the Washington Post has predicted Cloudy Fortunes for Conservatism, and he quoted National Review which said, “Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for.” and stated himself that,

Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.

Mr. Goldberg then cited a Pew Political Typology survey in 2005, which said that a third of the Republican coliation or just under 10 percent of registered voters styled themselves “pro-government conservatives”. Finally he states the young Christian conservatives are increasingly eager to bring faith-based activism to the party.

This young evangelicals were not around for the formation of the Republican coalition, and have embraced Huckabee in resounding numbers that the old guard has been unwilling to do, for a variety of reasons.

Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan, in an article for Newsweek entitled, “In the Name of the Father” opined that the Republican field is obsessed with who is the most like Reagan, who’s the better hunter, who’s more religious(nevermind that Reagan wasn’t a hunter, or all that religious in the sense that he took his religion to government with him). But ultimately its not who is most like Reagan in this flawed field, but instead who can keep the Reagan coalition intact, while it is true that most of the candidates are flawed and don’t have the total package of Reagan, thats more to the characteristics that make up a good candidate, and not to the man himself. Ultimately, Huckabee’s religiosity is not about a return to the coalition of Reagan or an attempt to compare himself to Reagan, but instead, is a look toward the future, the future where the coalition is no more.

McCain’s showing in New Hampshire, is promising, but thats not where the base of the Republican party lies, nor is it in Michigan(although that is more representative), it is the south that will be the true test as to whether the Republican coalition will crumble or survive for another election cycle, so all eyes should be on South Carolina.

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