Category: Mike Huckabee

Dear God, Not Huckabee, Please

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At MSNBC, Chuck Todd is doing cartwheels in his Team Obama cheerleader skirt over a poll showing a spike in the president’s approval. What ought to have Republicans calling the suicide hotline is the poll’s numbers showing Mike Huckabee ahead of the GOP 2012 pack:

Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, the NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama leading Mike Huckabee by 10 points (51%-41%) and Newt Gingrich by 19 points (54%-35%). The December poll had him leading Mitt Romney by seven (47%-40%) and Sarah Palin by 22 (55%-33%). But keep in mind: At this stage of the 1996 cycle, McInturff says, Bob Dole was leading Bill Clinton in the NBC/WSJ poll. That tells us one of two things: Either these polls aren’t that reliable this far out, or that Obama enters the 2012 in a much stronger position than Clinton did in ’96. For the first time, our poll also handicapped the ’12 GOP field. Leading the pack are Romney (the first choice of 19% of Republicans and independents) and Huckabee (18%) — followed by Palin (14%), Gingrich (10%), Ron Paul (8%), and Tim Pawlenty (at 5%). We also asked “second choice,” and if you take Palin out, the person who benefits the most is Huckabee. He would lead a Palin-less GOP primary, not Romney.

Before you swallow that bottle of sleeping pills, slash your wrists and stick your head in the oven, however, let me remind you that these are nationwide numbers, that the poll’s methodology looks screwy — Da Tech Guy thinks the sample is not exacfly random — and that the results of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary will not be determined by such craptastic media trickery. Actual people have to cast actual votes, and the Iowa caucuses are still a year away.

P.S.: Apologies for the mental image of Chuck Todd doing cartwheels in a cheerleader skirt.

Malkin and Coulter Underrated?

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Conservative Home, a new Web site run by people you never heard of, has published the results of a survey of “1,152 Republican activists” identifying their favorite pundits.

The top five are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — i.e., the top talk-radio star, three Fox News hosts and and a Washington Post columnist who appears frequently on Fox News.

Before you say “epistemic closure,” let me point out that Michelle Malkin is ranked No. 7 and Ann Coulter No. 9 on the list. Both of them are more conservative than O’Reilly or Newt Gingrich (No. 6) and both of them have written important, heavily-researched books that were also huge bestsellers.

Malkin’s Invasion must be ranked as the best book on immigration policy since Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation (which is very high praise) and In Defense of Internment . . . my God, talk about poking the hornet’s nest of political correctness with a stick.

As for Coulter, her books are much better than is suspected by people who know her only for her snarky jabs on TV. As for her right-wing bona fides, I still remember the shock of reading Godless, in which she described Joe Sobran as her “mentor.” If you know anything about Sobran, that one reference ought to give you pause the next time you hear some idiot dismiss Coulter as a “neo-con.” 

Malkin and Coulter and George Will (No. 10) would all rank above O’Reilly in any fair ranking of conservative pundits, but “favorite” is not the same as “most conservative,” of course. I’m also surprised that Mark Levin didn’t make the list, but you see that — with the exception of Limbaugh and Will — the basic factor here seems to be, “Who gets the most airtime on Fox?”

The Conservative Home editors themselves have other concerns:

Worryingly, columnists often regarded as among the most thoughtful conservatives did not fare well. David Brooks of the New York Times only mustered a mention from 1.3% of the panel (14 people). Ross Douthat, also at the NYT, won just four votes and Mike Gerson, Washington Post writer and former speechwriter to President Bush, gets just three mentions.

These omissions are entirely understandable:

  • David Brooks is not a conservative, period. He has described himself as a “moderate,” and I say we take his word for it.
  • Douthat is conservative and, as the editors say, “thoughtful,” but his thoughtfulness manifests itself as an unwillingness to reach out, smack liberals upside the head and yell, “You’re wrong!” (Metaphorically, of course.) A good conservative pundit has to be confrontational toward liberalism, and aggressively so. This has been true of every great pundit of the Right since Buckley smacked Yale upside the head in 1951.
  • The basic problem with Gerson can best be summarized in the phrase “former speechwriter to President Bush.” Gerson recently wrote a good column, which makes him 1-for-the-season by my count. In general, Gerson’s prose is boring and bland. David Frum considers Gerson his intellectual inferior and this is one point where even Frum’s worst enemies wouldn’t argue with him.

It is possible to be erudite and serious without being pompous, snobby, wishy-washy or dull, and the Brooks/Douthat/Gerson troika can’t seem to transcend that hurdle.

Calling B.S. on Ed Rollins

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Dan Calabrese has had it up to here with the anti-Palin crowd: 

it seems that just about everyone else is obsessed with Palin’s presidential prospects, and that includes a certain Ed Rollins, who holds forth today on CNN.com with a piece titled, “Palin, I knew Reagan. You’re no Reagan.”
Well.
There is much to mock about a piece on Gov. Palin’s supposed lack of presidential qualifications, especially coming from a man who once tried to help win the presidency for H. Ross Perot, who was not only unqualified but also insane.

Jennifer Caballero at Liberty Pundits asks the all-too-obvious question:

“Why is Huckabee’s ex- campaign manager
telling us who’s worthy of Reagan’s mantle?”

Bingo, Jen. Whatever your opinion of Sarah Palin, the problem is that nearly all her most prominent critics are professional operatives of one sort or another. If they are not already on the payroll of some prospective 2012 GOP presidential candidate, then they are presumably seeking such work. And they know they can get headlines and ingratiate themselves to those prospective employers by publishing anti-Palin rants.

The real danger here, as I’ve said before, is that this relentless Palin-bashing from within the GOP can have no good result. Either (a) Palin wins the nomination anyway, in which case the GOP 2012 nominee will have been damaged by all these friendly-fire attacks, or (b) someone else will win the nomination as the beneficiary of a none-too-subtle “Anybody But Sarah” campaign in the primaries. And then good luck getting those people energized for the general election.

Rush Limbaugh did a great segment Wednesday on the anti-Palin crowd, featuring this quote from GOP operative Nicolle Wallace:

Only Sarah Palin can beat Sarah Palin.  And let me tell you why no one will take her on.  Her defenders and supporters, the likes of Rush Limbaugh and people I admire, are so powerful on the right that nobody wants to anger any of those people, nobody wants to end up in the crosshairs, and nobody wants to look like they are unwilling to let her do her thing.  I don’t think people should be, you know, uptight and angsting about Sarah Palin.  I think she’ll reveal herself, and people will love her or hate her.  I really believe that if it looked like she were about to become the nominee, or, heaven forbid, the leader of the free world, a whole lot of people would stand up and say a whole lot of things.

Understand one thing: Nicolle Wallace is Team Bush all the way. She is speaking for, and serving the interests of, the Bush wing of the GOP. I’ve long warned that there is a Jeb 2012 bandwagon geared up and ready to roll at a moment’s notice, if Jeb decides to take a shot at it. If that doesn’t happen, the Bushies are trying to keep their thumb on the scale, to make sure that whoever gets the 2012 nomination, it’s someone acceptable to them.

But the Bushies know that, whatever else happens, it’s all over for them if Sarah Palin gets the 2012 nomination. Establishment phonies like Nicolle Wallace will be persona non grata to a Palin-led Republican Party. 

Just keep that in mind. There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes of the GOP than most grassroots conservatives suspect.

P.S.: Ed Rollins? Dude worked on the Huffington ’94 Senate campaign.