So my dad has been talking about Mike Huckabee for the past month. At first I ignored him, because I thought that Huckabee was even more inconsequential than Ron Paul (who I also find interesting) as a candidate for the White House.
And then, out of nowhere, in the last week Huckabee is everywhere; the internet, NPR, newspapers, tv news, etc. Huckabee is a conservative Republican governor of Arkansas who has raised a mere 1/100 of the money that Senator Clinton has to date but is nevertheless surging in the Republican primary.
This increased notoriety, for Huckabee, was accomplished primarily through the internet. We often hear that you can’t be president unless you raise hundreds of millions of dollars, which is true, but the internet does level the playing field in allowing us to hear about other candidates and ideas that are not covered in major media outlets.
I still don’t think that Huckabee has a chance at the presidency. However, I do find it reassuring that in today’s America a candidate with very little money or name recognition and possessing only the celebrity endorsement of a B-level 1980’s action star, a weight loss story, and a a good ol’ local boy persona can draw interest and support in a field of media big-names.
I also like that people like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee, despite the fact that they have little support, are allowed platforms to promulgate ideas from the further right and left of the American political spectrum.
The mere fact that who Chuck Norris supports for president matters is a wonder to behold.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/73272
December 8, 2007 at 5:50 am
You like Kucinich, seriously? Isn’t he the guy who believes in aliens? As for Huckabee being recently christened “Chuck Norris Approved”, I firmly believe that status will prove integral when campaigning in the southern states.
December 8, 2007 at 1:49 pm
The media’s already got a name for his sudden rise.
“Huckaboom.”
Personally, while I’m sure Huckabee’s a nice guy, his campaign’s sudden shift to a religious tone strikes me as a purely political tactic to contrast him from Giuliani–currently the leading contender for the Republicans. Giuliani annoys the crap out of the religious right because of his more socially liberal views, especially on abortion, and they were essentially without a candidate of their own for a while. That is until Huckabee’s campaign staff, I think, realized they had a segment of the population they could mobilize to their cause.
There’s nothing innovative about this, of course. Republicans capitalizing on the religious right? Let’s just call it The Rove Maneuver.
By the way, Roberto, you really ought to check out Krugman’s book “The Conscience of a Liberal” if you have time. It’s an excellent history of how America was deliberately shifted from New Deal economics to the big income gap society we have today. Not that I support the kind of tax rates FDR slapped on the rich, but still it’s revealing to see how politics–NOT economics–has contributed to the economic inequality today. I’d subtitle the book “How Movement Conservatism Used Racism & Paranoia to Undo the New Deal.”