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The Romney campaign is starting to flatline:
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has vaulted over his major GOP challengers to take a commanding lead in the race to win the Iowa caucuses, while Barack Obama continues to edge ahead of Hillary Clinton among Democrats likely to participate, a new NEWSWEEK poll shows.
The most dramatic result to come out of the poll, which is based on telephone interviews with 1,408 registered Iowa voters on Dec. 5 and 6, is Huckabee's emergence from the shadows of the GOP race into the front runner's spot in just two months. The ordained Southern Baptist minister now leads Romney by a two-to-one margin, 39 percent to 17 percent, among likely GOP caucus-goers. In the last NEWSWEEK survey, conducted Sept. 26-27, Huckabee polled a mere 6 percent to Romney's 25 percent, which then led the field.
But what about the speech? I mean Hugh Hewitt James Dobson, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager all thought it was the Beehive State's knees. Well, I'm glad you asked:
Questions about religion—in particular skepticism about Romney's Mormonism—appeared to play a role in the latest results on the GOP side. The survey was completed on the day of the former Massachusetts governor's much-heralded speech in College Station, Texas, addressing his religion, though most respondents probably had not heard it. Still, only a small number of the 540 Republican voters surveyed in Iowa (10 percent) said they wanted to hear more from Romney about that issue, and close to half (46 percent) said at least some Iowa Republican voters will not consider supporting Romney because of his Mormon faith. More than a quarter (27 percent) said they don't consider Mormons to be Christians, and one in six (16 percent) said they are less likely to support Romney because he is a Mormon.
Mary Katherine Muppetmouth blames it on the press:
But you gotta wonder if the good reviews of bloggers and columnists and the message of the speech itself will be heard by regular voters over the din of the media's Mormon-centric repackaging of the speech. Mitt calculated it would.
...and Mitt was wrong, it seems.
So now rich man fanciers Hugh Hewitt and Larry Kudlow are all hot and huckabothered by Candidate Mike and turn their knives on him:
LK: Regarding Governor Huckabee, Governor Huckabee is a very interesting guy who is not running as the kind of traditional, free-trade, cut taxes, limit government, supply side conservative. He is not. And we walked through a whole bunch of things on trade and China and taxes, and also, he just blurted out CEO pay, which he violently disagrees with. And in fact, he said he would…he doesn’t want to regulate it, but he said at one point he would regulate CEO pay as a last resort.
HH: Oh.
LK: I thought that was very important. He’s very biased against China trade. He’s skeptical. He says the middle class is in trouble. He didn’t acknowledge the prosperity. I really asked him about today’s excellent jobs report, and the general prosperity we’re enjoying. He didn’t want to go there.
HH: You know, Larry, last night I watched Glen Beck as I was preparing to give a speech. I’m told it was a replay of a Huckabee interview. But what I heard last night, he was talking about the ruling class in America.
LK: Yeah.
HH: You know that’s populism, Huey Long yahooism.
LK: Yeah.
HH: That’s not the Republican Party.
LK: Nope. It’s interesting to me, because I mean, I said are you a pessimist, I say you sound pessimistic on the campaign trail. And he said I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist. And I think he’s the only candidate, Hugh, who is acknowledging these middle class anxieties, almost reaching out to them. He doesn’t have a solution except to curb trade. But he’s really playing to that, in that sense, just like the Democrats are. And the thing is, you have to look at this in a serious vane(sic), because he’s doing so well in the polls. I mean, it would seem that the more his message gets out, the better he’s doing. And I find that quite troubling, but I think that’s the reality.
Tell me how can a rich man stands such times and live?
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Once he passes through the eye of the needle on camelback.
I think that’s what Jesus said…
is it wrong of me to really, really want to hear (not so much see for fear of manboob heavage) Hugh Hewitt crying like the little bitch he is? with Dean Barnett sobbing in confused terror at the sight of it?
Shorter MSM: “We’re boooored with Board Master Mittsy! We want a new face to entertain us, or we’ll have to start reading all those boring economic policy papers, whiiiiine…. “
Much as I hate Willard — the only man whose ethics are so flexible, he can give himself a rimjob (cuz blowjobs are not permitted) — I’m not enamoured of the Arkansas Elmer Gantry. Here’s hoping Tom Hilton is right, and that Huckabee can’t muster the money/troops to capitalize on his temporary media ‘triumph’.
But you gotta wonder if the good reviews of bloggers and columnists and the message of the speech itself will be heard by regular voters
I must be at the wrong blog. But, if he pisses off Hewitt and Kudlow, then rock on Huckleberry. You too, Ron Paul. I still think it’s going to come down to a steel cage match to determine the Repub winner.
The creepy thing is, Huck might be electable in a race with Obama. That’s the Rove theory isn’t it.
We’ll have to see if all those people who tell pollsters in Iowa and NH that they like Obama actually vote for him, being so gifted with pigment and all.
I dislike Obama for other reasons, but it would not surprise me at all to find racism (racism!) among white dems, especially the older ones.
I hate to talk about people.
But even Romney’s dad was a major league asshole and the best part of Mitt ran down his dad’s leg. Or maybe the milkman’s.
Wow. Warn us when you do want to talk about people.
Some conspiracy-minded people are saying that Huckabee is being painted as too liberal to make him more palatable in the general election, but I don’t think Man Boobs and The Former Economist Now Insane Supply Sider are that clever.
I seem to recall a book by Arthur C. Clarke, The Songs of Distant Earth, in which, as part of the “history” of the soon-to-be-burnt-in-a-supernova planet Earth, that, eventually, the position of President would be filled by a lottery. Also, that, somehow, people who really, really wanted the job were identified and disqualified from the lottery.
As the years go by, this approach sounds more and more reasonable.
Stand back. They’re starting to sling blood as they eat they’re young. Hope everybody has plenty of popcorn stocked up. We had a run on popcorn at our local supermarket.
PS: I would dearly love to see a debate between Barrack Obama and Mike Huckabilly.
oops their young
in the GOP, the money people always win, don’t they?
and are they for Mitt or Rudy? Who makes for more profit for them?
Huckabee is way more dangerous than Mitt. Huckabee seems like a nice guy but tends to throw temper tantrums and is a brittle Xtian. He is a tad bit less dangerous than Gouliani. Mitt will never clear the Mormon hurdle. And John McCain is a tweeb. And that is all I have to say about that.
Yes, the money guy always wins, and in this case it is Guliani, period. He’s way more connected financially; Huckabilly is a temporary spring break fling, Once we start getting primaries from states that are less, ah, rabidly Xtian, Huckabilly hits the dirt.
Mitt is the one to look out for, because most Americans do not and will not pay an iota of attention to the things we know and despise about him. As we saw with the Bush phenomenon, they can’t detect a phony on the campaign trail, especially when the press is busy sucking up to said phony. They’ll see a handsome, swave, plausible guy, a fella who talks nice and who you’d like to have a sarsparilla with (given that he doesn’t drink beer).
Let’s not forget that an arguable majority of people in this country like the kinds of things he said in his “Freedom Requires Religion” speech. Some of them think atheists and Buddhists and Those Kinds of People are not real Americans, anyway. And the ordinary unchurched-but-claiming-belief (”C & E”) Christians are as ignorant of Mormonism as a pond of frogs, and/or pride themselves on their tolerance of a “Jesus-believing” religion practiced by such smiley, upstanding people (”He seems so NICE!”). If Mormons are so socially pleasant and upbeat and moral and all, their religion can’t be that bad, right?
It’s only the hardest of the hardcore fundies who will turn down a certified Republican charmer like the Mittster for the mere peccadillo of being a Mormon. And they’re a minority that he can win without, given that he’ll be able to hoodwink those millions of voters who decide on instinct and personal conversations (in other words, on the basis of whatever media “image” gains greatest currency). The press will make love to handsome, glib, smooooooth Mitty, and they will again spurn the bookish, tiresomely serious Democrat.
This joint crashed my browser again when I came in tonight. What is UP with that? Grrrr.
Huckleberry is very media savvy. Better than Clinton, but saddled with a tougher sell message. Romney on the other hand is as wooden as anyone I’ve seen running for the top job.
It took me a while, but I’ve figured out that attributes I mention in my first paragraph are the most important. The policies matter a little bit, but the stroke the guy can put on a camera and a bobblehead matters a lot.
So somehow this guy is going to wipe the floor with der Mittster and Rudy, and lose to a very lucky democrat. Lucky because they got to run against a creationist minister. If it wasn’t for that I’d be etching his name on the trophy right now.
Fuck the Huck.
Young-earth whacko lunatic freakshow dipshit psycho douche.
The man believes the earth is six thousand years old.
Younger than Assyria.
Younger than Sumeria
Younger than China.
Younger than Homo Neanderthalensis.
Younger than fucking Lucy the Australopithecus aferensis.
Younger than every dinosaur known to archaeology.
The Fuckster is certifiably insane.
He should be a perfect choice for this certifiably insane country.
I’ve been in the Lascaux caves.
I’ve seen drawings of wild cattle, the aurochs, that haven’t existed for 10,000 years.
This Huckabee thing drives me to the brink of my own insanity.
That a man who so incomprehensibly denies the proofs of science in the name of an overlording space daddy can be a legitimate candidate for the most powerful office in the world.
AAAAAIIIIIGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!