{"id":331,"date":"2008-01-07T10:40:25","date_gmt":"2008-01-07T14:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/2008\/01\/07\/is-the-gop-establishment-warming-to-huckabee\/"},"modified":"2008-01-07T10:40:25","modified_gmt":"2008-01-07T14:40:25","slug":"is-the-gop-establishment-warming-to-huckabee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/is-the-gop-establishment-warming-to-huckabee","title":{"rendered":"Is the GOP establishment warming to Huckabee?"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Review endorsed Romney a few weeks back. On Saturday, their Editor Rich Lowry described Huckabee as “brilliant,\u00a0absolutely brilliant”:<\/a><\/p>\n

I only could stay for Huckabee’s 15-minute opening remarks at a packed\u2014I mean packed\u2014event at a gym in a Londonberry middle school this morning, but it was brilliant, absolutely\u00a0brilliant. It was one of the most stirring and persuasive defenses of self-government and limited government\u2014including the doctrine of subsidiarity\u2014that I have heard in a long time. This guy is very good, and very shrewd\u2014after playing the evangelical card in Iowa, today\u00a0he was saying how America is all about “live free or die.” If\u00a0McCain beats Romney here, you have to favor\u00a0McCain for the nomination, but you can’t totally discount the possibility that Huckabee wins it, if<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0it turns out that McCain still has limited appeal to bedrock Republicans despite a win here (and perhaps Michigan too) and if<\/em><\/strong> Huckabee can broaden out from evangelicals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

William Kristol in an op\/ed for the New York Times<\/a> on Sunday said “…Huckabee could credibly and comfortably make the socially conservative case in an electorally advantageous way.”<\/p>\n

I was watching the debate at the home of a savvy, moderately conservative New Hampshire Republican. It was at this moment that he turned to me and said: \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve been a huge skeptic about Huckabee. I\u2019m still not voting for him Tuesday. But I\u2019ve got to say \u2014 I like him. And I wonder \u2014 could he be our strongest nominee?\u201d<\/p>\n

He could be. After the last two elections, featuring the well-born George Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry, Americans \u2014 even Republicans! \u2014 are ready for a likable regular guy. Huckabee seems to be that. He came up from modest origins. He served as governor of Arkansas for more than a decade. He fought a successful battle against being overweight. These may not be utterly compelling qualifications for the presidency. I\u2019m certainly not ready to sign up.<\/p>\n

Still, as the conservative writer Michelle Malkin put it, \u201cFor the work-hard-to-get-ahead strivers who represent the heart and soul of the G.O.P., there are obvious, powerful points of identification.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Review endorsed Romney a few weeks back. On Saturday, their Editor Rich Lowry described Huckabee as “brilliant,\u00a0absolutely brilliant”: I only could stay for Huckabee’s 15-minute opening remarks at a packed\u2014I mean packed\u2014event at a gym in a Londonberry middle … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}