Mike Huckabee is a likable pol who has excellent communications skills. He's down to earth and can tell a joke, which, in a Republican field filled with alpha males, distinguishes him from the pack and makes him seem a little more, well, normal than the other candidates.
But is he really, as David Brooks claims, "the one candidate acceptable to all factions" in the Republican party? Not quite. Free market conservatives and the business community, already ready to bolt the party in order to benefit from, or be protected in case of, a possible Clinton restoration, haven't embraced Huckabee. Nor do they have reason to do so. And national security hawks have reason to doubt Huckabee's seriousness in prosecuting the war on terror and carrying the Bush Doctrine into the next administration. By my count, then, Huckabee has issues with two major conservative constituencies.
This is not to deny the strong possibility that Huckabee may become the candidate of the social right, or at least a large portion of it. But Brooks also exaggerates Huckabee's uniqueness. He writes:
Fifth, though you wouldn't know it from the past few years, the white working class is the backbone of the G.O.P. Huckabee is most in tune with these voters.
He was the first male in his family's history to graduate from high school. He paid his way through college by working 40 hours a week and getting a degree in two and half years. He tells audiences that the only soap his family could afford was the rough Lava soap, and that he was in college before he realized showering didn't have to hurt. "There are people paying $150 for an exfoliation," he jokes. "I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap."
It's a funny joke. But there's another candidate with a similar childhood background, who is polling better than Huckabee and is in a stronger position financially.
