Mike Huckabee may be no Ron Paul, but his Southern economic populism, and his insistence that it is not America’s mission to export democracy around the world, make him the next best thing on offer. So what if he doesn’t believe in evolution? Who was the last candidate of either party who openly did?
If Huckabee does well, and certainly if he wins the Republican nomination or even the Presidency itself, then the Democrats in 2012 will need to find a morally and socially conservative economic populist and foreign policy realist who was demonstrably even more of a populist and realist than Huckabee. Such a candidate would win, and would deserve to win.
Like it or not, the Republican base sets the American agenda. Well, largely made up as it is of people who were Democrats until Roe v Wade and who really should be still, let it set agenda like these.
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Actually the Republican base is made up of the Rich and the Super-Rich (what GWB calls "the Haves and the Have-Mores"). It has been since the Civil War. Sometimes these people are progressive, sometimes they're conservative. Whatever happens though, they don't want Hillary to win.
ReplyDeleteBoth parties contain no shortage of the rich and super-rich.
ReplyDeleteIt's the morally and socially conservative rural and suburban white working and lower middle classes, who were Democrats until Roe v Wade, who keep the Republican party going, by consistently voting against their own economic interest in the hope that that that party might one day put itself put of business by restricting abortion. Will they never learn?
Meanwhile, the morally and socially conservative urban white working and lower middle classes are as Democratic as ever, as are the morally and socially conservative black working and lower middle classes in the inner cities, the suburbs and the countryside alike.
Rather than voting against their economic interest out of forlorn moral and social hope, they vote against their moral and social interest out of forlorn economic hope, getting nothing but NAFTA, GATT and the like in return.
I don't want Hillary to win, either. But I don't see how Rudy would be any better. Or even any different at all. They should be each other's running mates. Why not?
But a good showing for either Paul or Huckabee, especially if one of them stood without the nomination and sent the final decision to the House of Representatives, would force the Democrats back to their roots in 2012 - the restoration of the old coalition of the urban, suburban and rural working and lower middle classes, black and white, around economic populism, moral and social conservatism, and a patriotism properly so called, which eschews both isolationism and the neoconservative project to make the world anew.
The Democrats would then control both the White House and Capitol Hill for generations. And they would deserve to.