Beagle Eyes

Photo by Brewcaster

David Sirota has an interesting column today about the intensely negative response to Mike Huckabee's populist campaign among the establishment media - especially the Republican media:

...Next to John Edwards (D), [Mike Huckabee] is the "classiest" presidential candidate, explicitly deriding "plutocracy" and "the Club for Greed" that he correctly says runs Washington.

(...)

To those with money and power, Huckabee is committing the worst sin. His class rhetoric puts his Christian religion's altruistic, meek-shall-inherit-the-Earth tenets above Washington's free market fundamentalism. And the cultural roots accompanying Huckabee's cause are even more appalling to the limousine crowd. This Republican apostate is not an Ivy Leaguer putting on a wink-and-nod show. He's a former Baptist minister from a low-income family who was never scrubbed by an elite brush — meaning he might actually believe in his class crusade.

(...)

Recall that the media portrays Bush's alliance with the religious right as proof of his convictions. Huckabee's alliance with the same religious right is subtly cast as a sign of supposed ignorance. Bush's rhetorical gaffes are often painted as endearing — evidence that despite his silver-spoon pedigree, he is the authentic "average American man" thinking "in a common-sense way," as Republican commentator Peggy Noonan wrote. Huckabee? The Weekly Standard calls him "a village idiot" and a "rube," while Noonan derides him for "populist manipulation."

Bush, you see, was always an aristocrat underneath the "windshield cowboy" veneer. He is the son of a president, a Skull-and-Bones man — ruling class all the way.

Huckabee, on the other hand, is a real-life regular guy. He views religion as more than just a convenient political cudgel, truly did pull himself "up from the bootstraps" — and his class grievances are personal. The well-heeled narcissists in the media and political Establishment are appalled. They see Huckabee as a country bumpkin getting uppity.

Once I get past the "OMG what if he wins?" panic, the exciting thing about the Huckabee campaign is that it has the potential to completely blow up the GOP's Flyover Strategy. The Republicans have successfully positioned themselves as the party of the ordinary, decent, hard-working, devout, salt-of-the-earth people of Middle America who are the backbone of this country, and the Democrats as the sneering, out-of-touch coastal elites who disparage and patronize them.

In the past, all the GOP had to do was trot out a Hollywood actor or well-connected Yalie who could play the part of Reg'lar Guy Who Knows His Scripture, and hordes of working-class evangelicals would turn out to vote for him. Sure, they might grumble a bit when the pro-corporate agenda took precedence over banning evolution, abortion and homosexuality, but they got enough bones thrown their way to convince themselves that they were supporting a decent, godly man.

Well, now there's an actual working-class evangelical candidate on the Republican side who is playing up Christian principles of compassion and social justice, and the Republican party establishment is so terrified that he might be sincere that they're falling all over themselves to deride him as an ignorant hick. Peggy Noonan is suddenly horrified by the GOP's pandering to religious "idiots," and Chuck Krauthammer essentially accuses Huckabee of using his Christianity as a weapon.

So how about it, salt-of-the-earth evangelical "values voters"? Feeling like maybe you've been used by people who hate and disrespect you, and have no intention of actually delivering on your agenda? Maybe not feeling quite so eager to march out to the polls to vote for yet another corporate shill?

I don't know whether to gloat or commiserate.

(Oh, and in case you don't get the photo...)