“Huckabee Is Ted Cruz’s Nightmare”: Playing Both Sides Of The Ball
The Upshot’’s Nate Cohn is making the contrarian case for Mike Huckabee. I give him credit for seeing things that others might not, but—despite the optimistic headline: “Mike Huckabee Would Be a More Important Candidate Than You Might Think,” he actually underestimates Huck’s potential as a disruptive factor in this campaign.
It’s unclear what’s in the water in Hope, Arkansas, but that Bill Clinton and Huck are both from the same hamlet is nothing short of miraculous. Put aside the snake oil salesman stuff, and the numerous ridiculous things Huckabee has said to get attention, and you’re left with a man who is essentially the love child of Clinton and Ronald Reagan. I recently argued that only the great politicians like The Gipper and Bubba can oscillate between indignation and compassion. Well, guess what: Huckabee can do both, too. This is a guy who’s so compelling he actually got Jon Stewart to question his own abortion stance.
“I’m a conservative; I’m just not mad about it,” he often quips. Except he can be mad about it—or feign anger, at least. So he can play the reasonable conservative or he can hurl red meat. As they say in football, he can play both sides of the ball. In 2008, Huckabee came out of nowhere to wow us in the debates. The competition will be stiffer this time around, but he can do it again.
The fact that Huckabee is a good communicator—and that he can appeal to evangelical Christians, a hugely important constituency in Iowa—is not exactly the most novel observation. But I think there are two additional things Huckabee has going for him that are not as widely appreciated.
The first is that he spent the last several years as a Fox News host. Now, let’s be honest: It’s unlikely that many people reading this have ever watched Huckabee’s Saturday night show—except to see if he was going to announce for president (or for purely ironic purposes). And I’m not even suggesting you were watching Girls instead. A lot of us who watch Fox shows like Special Report wouldn’t think to turn on Huckabee.
But millions of Americans did watch his show—and guess what? Many of these same Americans will vote in Republican primaries. I think we probably underestimate the impact of hosting a weekly show on Fox News.
Lastly, though, I think there is a huge underserved constituency in the GOP—and that constituency is what might best be termed populist conservatives. These folks tend to be white and working-class and who feel they’ve been left behind in America. They are culturally conservative—but they also want to keep government out of their Medicare.
Mitt Romney was arguably the worst candidate Republicans could have ever nominated to appeal to this constituency. But while candidates like Huckabee and Rick Santorum flirted with going full populist, something always seemed to keep them from really doubling down on it.
One can only assume this is because there is a ceiling on how much populist demagoguery one is permitted to dole out—and still remain a Republican in good standing. There’s a fine line between attacking the “fat cats” and engaging in class warfare, and one doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of that line. But having cashed in, and now finding himself in his post-radio, and possibly post-TV phase, Huckabee might well decide it’s time to throw caution to the wind.
Don’t get me wrong: As a free market conservative, this brand of populism isn’t my cup of tea. Nor do I think Huckabee can win the nomination. He’s always lacked money and organization, and that won’t change. But as a political observer, I can’t help but suspect that there is a huge opening for a conservative candidate willing to be the working man’s conservative.
The last time someone really tried this was when “Pitchfork” Pat Buchanan, and then Ross Perot, ran in 1992. It resonated then, but that was before the “giant sucking sound” really kicked in. Whether it’s globalization or immigration—or whatever “-ation” might have taken your job—it stands to reason that the same grassroots phenomenon that helped Buchanan and Perot tap into an underserved constituency might be even more potent today.
Already known as a tax-and-spender, Mike Huckabee isn’t soon going to win over Steve Forbes or Larry Kudlow or The Club for Growth, so why try? There are tons of Americans out there listening to country radio, clinging to God and guns…and government.
The other day, when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie proposed some fairly modest reforms to save social security (means testing and raising the retirement age to 69), ostensibly conservative readers weighed in against it on the Facebook page of the Daily Caller, where I work.
“I’m entitled to social security because it’s MY money that I have given to the govt since I was 16 years old with the PROMISE I would get it back when I was older. FU Christie.” Yes, this is anecdotal—but this comment was also representative of a lot of comments on that particular post. A lot of conservatives appear to believe there is some lockbox where “their” money is being saved for their retirement.
A few days later came this headline from the Weekly Standard: “Huckabee Bashes Republican Plans to Reform Medicare and Social Security.” As Huckabee himself told The Daily Beast over the weekend, “I’m getting slammed by some in the GOP ruling class for thinking it wrong to involuntarily take money from people’s paychecks for 50 years and then not keep the promise government made.”
Some of the same underlying trends behind the excitement over Elizabeth Warren are present, if dormant, on the right. So how can Huckabee break away from the pack? Most free market conservatives I know agree that “crony capitalism” is a problem. This has become boilerplate language you can expect from everyone from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz, and it’s a kind of flirting with populism.
But Huckabee appears poised to do what no other Republican will have the ability or the inclination to do—and that is to go full populist in a way that acknowledges the fact that a lot of folks need the government’s help, that resents the fact that the game has been rigged by the rich and the corporations, yet still embraces a culturally conservative lifestyle. This will provoke serious pushback from the libertarian and pro-business wings of the conservative coalition. But if he does it—if he sticks to it—out there in the hinterland, there’ll be a market for it.
Get your pitchforks ready.
By: Matt Lewis, The Daily Beast, April 21, 2015; Editor’s note: Matt Lewis’s wife previously consulted for Ted Cruz’s senate campaign, and currently consults for RickPAC, the leadership PAC affiliated with Rick Perry.
“Koch Brothers Eye 2016 Favorite”: David Koch Talked About The Wisconsin Governor As If His Primary Success Was Simply Assumed
Presidential candidates are always eager to earn support from voters, but with nine months remaining until anyone casts a primary ballot, White House hopefuls have a slightly different focus at this stage in the process. As the race gets underway in earnest, the goal isn’t just to get public backing, but rather, to get support from a specific group of mega-donors.
And in the world of national Republican politics, the Koch brothers have few rivals.
Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, appear to have a favorite in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker would be the Republican nominee.
According to the New York Times’ report, David Koch talked about the Wisconsin governor as if his primary success was simply assumed: “When the primaries are over and Scott Walker gets the nomination…” he joked.
The article noted two other attendees who said they heard Koch go further, describing the Republican Wisconsinite as the candidate who should get the GOP nomination.
It’s worth emphasizing that Koch, following the Times’ reporting, issued a written statement, describing Walker as “terrific,” but stressing, “I am not endorsing or supporting any candidate for president at this point in time.”
The statement doesn’t necessarily contradict the reporting. It’s entirely possible, for example, that the Kochs will remain officially neutral during the nominating process, while also privately acknowledging their preference for Walker while talking to allies behind closed doors.
And if that’s the case, it’s a major advantage for the far-right governor over his rivals. The Kochs not only carry an enormous wallet, they oversee a large political operation and enjoy broad credibility among conservative activists and donors.
A Koch endorsement, even if private, matters, especially as candidates search for ways to stand out in a crowded field.
That said, if the reporting is accurate and the Kochs are partial towards Walker, that doesn’t necessarily mean the governor will have the same kind of relationship with his billionaire benefactors as other recent candidates.
We’ve grown accustomed to thinking about Republicans and their billionaires as a kind of dynamic duo – we see the candidate, but we know he has a partner that’s largely responsible for bankrolling his candidacy. In 2012, it was Sheldon Adelson backing Newt Gingrich, while Foster Friess supported Rick Santorum. This year, Robert Mercer has partnered with Ted Cruz, while Norman Braman helps bankroll Marco Rubio.
Don’t expect a comparable relationship between the Kochs and Walker, at least not at this stage. If the powerful billionaire brothers intend to stay officially neutral, then Walker may look forward to the Kochs’ backing in a general election, but he’ll need others to finance his primary fight.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 21, 2015
“The Tea Party Will Never Understand The Constitution”: What The Right Misses About Its Favorite Document
With the 2016 election cycle having kicked into first-gear already, any American who hasn’t inured themselves to the monotonous (and often ultimately meaningless) repetition of the word “Constitution” is advised to get to self-desensitizing — and quick.
Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have already made a fetishized version of the U.S.’s supreme governing document central to their campaign rhetoric; and even politicians less beloved by the supposedly Constitution-crazy Tea Party, like Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, are likely to soon follow suit. That’s how American politics functions now, in the era of the NSA, Guantanamo Bay, lethal drone strikes and endless war.
But as that list of questionable policies suggests, there’s an unanswered question lurking behind so much of our happy talk about the Constitution — namely, do we even understand it? As dozens of polls and public surveys will attest, the answer is, not really. And that’s one of the reasons that Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar has decided to write a multi-book series about the Constitution so many Americans claim to love, but so few seem to understand. “The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of our Constitutional Republic,” released earlier this month, is that project’s latest addition.
Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Amar about the Constitution, his books, and why he sees Abraham Lincoln as perhaps the United States’s real founding father. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.
So this book is part of a larger, multi-book project on the Constitution. The first was a biography of the document, the second was about its “unwritten” provisions, and this is the third. What’s your focus this time?
The third book in this project is a geographical slicing of the story; ours is a vast republic of massive diversity, and the Constitution looks a little different in different states and regions. I try to show all of that that through 12 stories … each of which says something general about the United States Constitution but does so through the window of a particular state. It discusses a person or an idea or a case or an event particularly associated with that region that also casts light, more generally, on our Constitutional project.
So how did what you call “brute geography” influence the way we understand the Constitution today?
The very breadth of the American landmass and its distance from the old world were huge elements in the American founding and in the Civil War experience. The idea of creating an indivisible union in the 1780s, the idea of forming a more perfect union, was an idea powerfully influenced by these two geographic factors: a wide moat between the Old World and the New World (known as the Atlantic Ocean) would be able to protect Americans from Old World tyranny in the same way the English Channel protected Britain from much of the militarism of the European Continent…
But in 1787, as Americans looked around the world, they saw that Britain was free, and Britain was free because England and Scotland had merged, had formed an indivisible, perfect union that would protect liberty because they had gotten rid of land borders on the island and only needed a navy to protect themselves. That worked for England and that would work for America even better, because we’d have an English Channel times 50.
This will become manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine; we’ll control our hemisphere and we’ll be protected from Europe … Our Constitution largely succeeds because there’s no major standing army in peacetime for most of American history, and that fact is created by some brute geographic realities.
I’m speaking to you now right around the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination. He looms very large in your book; you describe him in some ways as almost prophetic. What made Lincoln’s understanding of the country and the Constitution so profound?
We live in Lincoln’s house. The Framers’ house was divided against itself; and, because of slavery, it fell. That failure is called the Civil War, and Lincoln rebuilt [the country] on a solid anti-slavery foundation, a foundation that would be strengthened after his death by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery everywhere, irrevocably), the Fourteenth Amendment (which promised racial equality) and the Fifteenth Amendment (which promised equal voting rights).
I begin the book with Lincoln because he transformed the Union. He saved it and transformed it and … his story was very much influenced by, literally, where he came from. He has a vision of the Constitution that’s very much influenced by Illinois, in particular, and by the Midwest more generally. He comes from a part of the country that was the Northwest Territory, that was always free soil even before the Constitution, and he has a very free-soil vision.
How so?
The language of the 13th Amendment is borrowed, word-for-word, from the language of the Northwest Ordinance. Lincoln thinks that the nation created the states, which, of course, Robert E. Lee … could never buy into. Robert E. Lee would say that the states created the Union; but the Midwest [perspective] would say … before Illinois was a state, it was a territory; the Union created these new states out of nothing. That’s a very Midwestern perspective on the Constitution.
Lincoln is, far and away, the most important constitutional decision-maker of the last two centuries; and arguably the most important constitutional decision-maker and interpreter ever.
But Lincoln was never a judge nor a constitutional scholar. He was a politician.
Most people are taught in high school that the most important constitutional decision is Marbury v. Madison, but that’s not even the most important constitutional decision of 1803. The Louisiana Purchase was far more important than Marbury v. Madison, because it doubled the landmass of America and made sure that the country would survive. When you understand that, you understand that many important constitutional decisions are made not by judges but by presidents.
The two most important constitutional decisions ever are Lincoln’s decision to resist [the South’s] unilateral secession, and Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which would lead to an end of slavery — that is transformative, and Lincoln made those decisions unilaterally as president. Had these issues reached the U.S. Supreme Court, controlled as it was [during Lincoln’s time] by Roger Taney, a fierce opponent of Lincoln, the Court might very well have tried to invalidate Lincoln’s projects.
We live in a Constitution utterly transformed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, and we would have none of those but for Lincoln.
Lincoln aside, though, you also argue that geography has played a big role in the Supreme Court — which, of course, is supposed to be the chief interpreter of the Constitution. How did geography influence the Court’s history?
Let’s take the most infamous judicial ruling of all time, the Dred Scott decision of 1857. It emerges from a Supreme Court that’s profoundly malapportioned: five of the nine justices on the Dred Scott court come from the slave-holding South, even though only a third of the population lives in that region.
Part of that is because entire antebellum system is skewed towards the South because of the three-fifths clause, which gives slave states extra clout in the House of Representatives and therefore the Electoral College. Presidents are picking justices, and the presidency tilts towards the South because of the three-fifths clause; almost all your early presidents are either slave-holding Southerners or “Northern men of Southern sympathies” — that is, pro-slavery Northerners.
If we view the Constitution and American history with more of a focus on the role played by geography, what are some the implications for U.S. politics today and in the near-future?
One of the things I’m trying to tell you in this book is how we can see presidential elections and our political polarization in new ways if we’re attentive to states and regions.
Our parties are polarized geographically; that this is not the first time that’s so (early on, it was the South against the North; Jefferson against Adams). The geographic alignment is remarkably similar to the geographic alignment in Lincoln’s time with this interesting twist: the Democrats have become the party of the North and the coasts and the Republicans have become the party of the former Confederacy. The parties have basically flipped, but it’s the same basic alignment…
One of the other big things I want you to see is how regions and states are hugely important in, for example, presidential politics. I talk about the significance in this book, in particular, of Ohio and Florida in the Electoral College and also of Texas. Is it a coincidence that Marco Rubio comes from Florida? That Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida who was born in Texas and whose father and brother had their political bases in Texas? That Rand Paul was born in Texas and his father ran for president from Texas? That Ted Cruz is from Texas? That Rick Perry is a former governor of Texas?
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, April 21, 2015
“A Corrupting Influence On Politics”: Will Influence Of Big Money Be A Big Issue In 2016?
For many years, Democrats have wanted more restrictive campaign finance rules, while Republicans have wanted to loosen restrictions. But it’s likely that the 2016 campaign will feature more outside money than ever before, as millionaires and billionaires take advantage of an almost-anything-goes environment to buy themselves candidates and shift the race in their favored direction. The Koch brothers alone plan to spend nearly a billion dollars (with the help of some friends) on the election.
Nevertheless, the consensus on the campaign finance issue has long been that while voters are generally in favor of reform, it isn’t a motivating issue for many of them. They care more about the economy or health care or foreign policy, and while they might shake their head at the influence of money in politics, in the end the issue won’t make much of a difference in the campaign’s outcome.
But is it possible that 2016 will be the year it finally does? Matea Gold has a piece in today’s paper arguing that it might:
At almost the same time last week that a Florida mailman was landing a gyrocopter in front of the U.S. Capitol to protest the influence of the wealthy on politics, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was getting pressed about the same topic at a town hall meeting in Londonderry, N.H.
“I think what is corrupting in this potentially is we don’t know where the money is coming from,” Christie (R) told Valerie Roman of Windham, N.H.
The two moments, occurring 466 miles apart, crystallized how money in politics is unexpectedly a rising issue in the 2016 campaign.
Hillary Rodham Clinton announced last week that one of the top planks of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination will be reforming a “dysfunctional” campaign finance system. And several of her GOP rivals — quizzed by voters in town hall meetings — have begun lodging their own criticisms of how big-money interests dominate politics.
It’s the last part that’s really a surprise. Republicans have usually put the emphasis on maximal liberty, arguing that restrictions on contributions and outside spending infringe upon the First Amendment. Democrats counter that a liberty that’s available only to the super-wealthy isn’t much of a liberty at all, and all this money, particularly when it’s so hard to know where it comes from, inevitably has a corrupting influence on politics. But now even Republicans seem to be saying things have gone too far.
Of course, it’s easy to just shake your head and say, “Yeah, it’s gotten really bad,” before you head off to your next fundraiser or meeting with Sheldon Adelson. And that’s how lots of candidates have handled the issue in the past: some general words of agreement or a vaguely worded position that doesn’t lock them in to doing much of anything about the problem.
But even if most voters don’t put campaign finance at the top of their priority list, there’s an opening for a candidate who can connect disgust over the political situation in Washington (which has become almost universal) with displeasure over the funding of campaigns to devise a broad reform agenda.
There are already ideas out there. For instance, Rep. John Sarbanes has a bill that would provide refundable tax credits for political contributions and give significant matching funds for small-dollar contributions in an attempt to amplify the voices of ordinary people who can only give a limited amount. That might not put the billionaires out of the politics business, but a candidate could use that idea or something like it to demonstrate his or her commitment to specific policy change, as opposed to just saying they wish the system were cleaner.
Clinton could be that candidate — though she hasn’t yet said anything specific about what she would change. But a Republican could as well. For the last couple of decades, presidential candidates have been saying they’ll change Washington by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to transcend partisanship, something no one believes anymore. But if (nearly) everyone thinks there’s too much money in the system and too much of it is unaccountable, there’s a political opportunity here. Will any candidate seize it?
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, April 20, 2015
“Main Street Nashuans Weren’t Feeling It”: The GOP Clown Show’s Alternate Reality In New Hampshire
Saturday morning found the America that politicians endlessly seek and love to mention but barely know strolling along the first floor of Alec’s Shoes on Main Street here in a city where at least 20 people running for President of the United States were at a hotel less than three miles away, talking. The candidates up the road ranged from a Bush, a Christie, one Paul, a Perry, a Trump, a Rubio, a Cruz, and more than a dozen others, all in town seemingly a decade before the primary next year.
But that traveling clown show didn’t matter much to Roland LeBlanc, who held a Nike sneaker in one hand and a Reebok in the other as he watched his 11-year-old son inspect a wall covered with hundreds of sneakers for sale at reasonable prices. He checked the price on both because the boy, like most kids, was only interested in style.
The Nikes were marked down to $70. The Reeboks were $64.
“How about this one, Dad?” the boy asked, holding a Nike that cost $90.
“I kinda like this one better,” the father replied, showing him the $70 sneaker.
A nuclear deal with Iran, a trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations, all of that and more was a long way from the immediate issue of the moment: the price of sneakers for a boy who would probably grow out of them by the end of summer.
“We get a good cross-section of people here,” John Koutsos, the owner of Alec’s Shoes, was saying. “We get fairly-high-income people here, low- and moderate-income families. We get them all.”
The store itself is a definition of a country too many people think is a distant, fond memory. It was opened in 1938 by John Koutsos’s father, Alec.
Alec Koutsos was born in Pentalofus, Greece, in 1917. He came to America and Nashua in 1934, in the middle of a Great Depression that knocked America to its knees. He did not know the language but he knew what it meant to work hard and to dream of better days and bigger things. He passed away last year at the age of 96, a proud, prosperous citizen.
Today the store is a local magnet to many looking for affordable footwear and clothing in a region hammered by our latest and very deep recession. It is the beating commercial heart of a Main Street where ‘For Lease’ signs are papered to windows of a dozen empty storefronts.
At the Church of Good Shepherd across Main Street a daily meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous had ended and several people stood on the sidewalk talking and smoking cigarettes, some looking as if their immediate future was simply the long day ahead, an agonizing wait before the next meeting when they would again fight temptation together. One of them, Eddie, a 26-year old-unemployed machinist, walked across Main Street to Joanne’s Kitchen & Coffee Shop, where he sat, sipping his coffee, reading the sports page.
“Heroin,” Eddie said. “That’s one of the biggest problems here. It’s all over the place and it’s cheap too. I used to do it but not anymore.”
Heroin overdose has stalked the region around parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. All the politicians gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for the First-in-the-Nation Republican Leadership Summit came prepared to discuss how lethal, how dangerous, ISIS was but there was no mention of the life-destroying availability of a drug that has flooded parts of the nation they seek to lead.
“I don’t know much about any of them,” John Koutsos said. “But it seems to me that the country needs a pep talk. There’s something wrong. People seem to be just sitting back, almost like they’re giving up a little. It’s hard to explain. Hard to put your finger on. It’s like everyone wonders, ‘Where we going?’”
At one end of Main Street in Nashua, there are the local offices of the state’s two United States senators. Republican Kelly Ayotte’s office is at the corner of Main and Temple. It is in a storefront next to the Vietnam Noodle House and across the street from a large Gentle Dental building. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, is a hundred yards farther along on the second floor of a fairly new brick office building.
In between there is the empty, for lease, building that once housed Aubuchon Hardware, a staple of northern New England life. Then there are fairly new buildings where Citizen Bank, Santander Bank, and CVS are found; chains that swallowed up small savings banks and corner drug stores, not just here, but everywhere.
Saturday found local residents out enjoying a sun-splashed New Hampshire morning, the weather offering immediate relief from a long, punishing winter. The parking lot at Nashua’s Pheasant Lane Mall, a few miles from Main Street, was packed with cars and shoppers, each parking space another bullet in the heart of downtown commerce.
At the Crowne Plaza there were the candidates, gathered, shaking hands, smiling, surrounded by the curious and the committed, talking about their views, their opinions on all the big issues that their handlers and their pollsters indicate will help propel them to the front of a truly predictable political pack. And, standing at the cashier’s counter of Alec’s Shoes, Roland LeBlanc paid cash for a $70 pair of Nike sneakers for an 11-year-old boy he hopes will grow up in a country filled with more optimism than too many think exists today.
By: Mike Barnicle, The Daily Beast, April 19, 2015
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