This is a tiny glimpse into the current state-of-the-art media campaign.
As the Mitt Romney campaign tries to slow down Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, they have long since begun issuing harsh criticism’s of Huckabee’s past actions and statements. On Sunday morning, on “Meet the Press,” Romney called on Huckabee to apologize to Pres. Bush for describing Bush’s foreign policy as “arrogant” and suffering from a “bunker mentality.”
Those quotes came from a recent Huckabee piece in “Foreign Affairs” magazine, outlining his foreign policy thinking. I haven’t read the full piece yet, but will.
On Sunday, the Romney Campaign also put out to its media list a long, blistering attack on the piece, which is not so much a rebuttal to the substance as it is a compendium of bad reviews given to the piece by the National Review, The American Spectator, Fox News, Politico, radio host Hugh Hewitt, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner, the neocon analyst Victor Davis Hanson, and, of Minnesota note, both Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters, and Paul Mirengoff of Powerline.
None of these commentators gave Huckabee’s piece any compliments, at least in the portions quoted in the Romney press release. This is not surprising. But is impressive — and a comment of the currently involved state of the media (by the way, several of the links are to videos) — how quickly and easily and blamefest like this can be assembled and distributed.
If you click through to the full Romney piece, you can then click through to the full text of the dozen or more denunciamentos (I haven’t done this and am not sure I will get to them all) and could spend several hours reading, watching and listening to how bad Huckabee’s article was, without coming across a contrary note.
Interesting to contemplate how this treatment might influence the piece of a mainstream objective reporter writing about the state of the Romney-Huckabee contest in Iowa, or about the quality of Huckabee’s foreign policy thinking. But I offer it mostly so you can see what reporters are getting from the campaigns.
If the Republicans nominate either of these clowns, the Democrats are going to win this thing going away. McCain, and possibly Giulliani, are the only chance the Republicans have.
Democrats would like to think so.
But Huckabee would be running with the support of the Evangelical churches in the states favored by the electoral college.
Evangelical support only works if you can get the Wall Street Republicans as well. Bush and other establishment Republicans were able to sell themselves to both groups, but the Republicans have never nominated a true believer like Huckabee. The winning formula is to pay lip service to the evangelicals and then govern for the Wall Streeters.
Huckabee puts a nice face on it, but his message is really one of extreme intolerance. The Republicans are going after him so hard because they know Huckabee will get absolutely crushed in the general election.
From the Huffingon Post:
“With Mike Huckabee’s continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He’s anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God.
So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn’t they be happy? They’ve been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who’s truly part of the movement. So what’s the problem?
Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited every few years in demagogic anti-gay get-out-the-vote campaigns. But now the holy-rolling monster the GOP’s Dr. Frankensteins have created has thrown off the shackles, fled the lab, and is currently leading in Iowa. And the party doesn’t know what to do.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huckabee-the-gops-cynic_b_77165.html
Hmm…you’d think this was about the General Election and not the walk-up to the primaries.
Seems to me pretty common for candidates to raise money and become active in hopes of making their positions become part of the discussion, and not only in hopes of winning the nomination. The little guy who campaigned for a balanced budget comes to mind. (For those with short memories, Ross Perot.)
I want to see not only who EVENTUALLY wins the nomination on both sides, but also how the presence of the other candidates on the scene colors the election conversation.
I see no-one questions that Huckabee represents the views of a substantial part of the voting population.
Huckabee’s issues - basically extreme social conservatism - are always part of the discussion. There are always these type of candidates (Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, etc) who bring those issues in, and the Republican front runners pay lip service to them (ahem, make them part of the discussion) If Huckabee doesn’t win, the Republicans will pay the ususal lip service to Huckabee’s issues, and put them on the back burner if they win the presidency. The only thing that is different in 2008, is that the social conservative candidate appears to have a shot at winning. And that terrifies the Republican establishment because they know that Huckabee will get absolutely destroyed in the general election. Huckabee does represent the views of a substantial part of the voting population, just not nearly enough to win the general election. The Republicans I know (who are all of the Wall Street variety) would never vote for a guy like that.