Gonna quibble a bit with you on this, D. I very much doubt that The Dub truly qualifies as a “fundie” (unless you mean, like, a trust fundie…) Bush’s reputation in that regard is manufactured, he does a lot of gesturing, signaling, what is called “dog whistles”, ways of playing to one segment of your audience without the rest catching on. His reputation is built mostly by the interpretations of others who tell their adherents that he is one of them, while he offers insinuations more than any actual meat.
Remember, the Prez went from his parents high tone Episcopalian to be a Methodist. Now, admittedly, this is a step away from “high tea” Christianity and towards the snake-handling fire and brimstone, but only a step. Methodists aren’t Unitarians, by any stretch, but neither are they Pentecostals or even (shudder!) Baptists.
Which only underlines the shuck and jive job the Pubbies did on the Trog Right. Bush mollifies the Trog Right with gestures and platitudes, but doesn’t alienate the semi-secular religious, who are far and away the greater bulk of churchly people. Huckabee is right out front with it, and it won’t fly. Twenty percent of the population, no matter how determined, will not prevail if the rest of the population finds them scary and/or silly.
However, if we can’t have Newt (grumble, grumble), then its Huckleberry Cornpone for me!
The guy looked like The Joker from Batman. It was brutal. But I think if you’re into politics you tend to overrate the importance of the Sunday talk shows. Not as many people watch them as we might think. But even someone that despises him as much as I do almost felt sorry for him.
luci, personally I think that Bush really believes it. But in politics perception is as good as reality … or better. Most of us granted him his fundie belief creds. As to Huckabee, saying that you personally believe the Bible is the literal word of God and question evolution as a mere theory is not something that scares most Americans or something that they find silly. I’m sure that you are already familiar with polls like this one that show a solid majority of Americans believe God created humankind in its present form and an overwhelming majority believe in God-guided evolution. Most won’t be scared off by that. And after considering the possibility of a Mormon anything else will seem mainstream. Well maybe not a Scientologist.
Again though, I think it would take a lot to fight off the likability factor, especially if HRC is the Democratic choice. Or turn it around, as people more often vote against someone than for someone - many will find him harder to hate than it is to hate HRC. Rudy? Easy to dislike. Romney? Never mind his Mormonism and his flip flops, it’s his technocratic delivery that would doom him as Gore and Kerry were hurt. McCain? He could possibly win in a general election too, especially if “the surge” continues to seem effective. Remember, the vote against HRC is a given solid chunk.
Like you say, if McCain could somehow get to the general election, right now he’s looking strongest of the group.
On the other side, if Edwards could somehow get to the general election, right now he’s looking strongest of the group. He’s always blown Romney away more than the others, but that seems to be carrying over to Huck as well. The surprises are that all three Dems are doing well against Rudy right now, and (even more so) that Edwards is the only one with the edge over McCain. (That difference, by my calculations, is significant at 90% confidence but not at 95% confidence, fwiw.)
Bob most people don’t know enough about Obama yet to have a strong negative or a strong positive of him. Oh, a few are negative just becuase of racial identification issues … but nothing compared to the ease that dislike of HRC comes to many. And he also is likable … not as much as Huckabee I fear … he comes off a bit too much of an intellectual, or as I think Rove put it, an anemic Adlai Stevenson, for much of America to really like, but he is not easy to hate anyway.
Now DSeid, let’s not help the GOP out by repeating their memes, shall we?
And anyway, I don’t get that impression of Obama at all. I recall one interview at a gym when someone passed him a basketball and he took a dribble and stuck the ‘j’. Ah, here we go. (Try that Adlai!) He has spoken easily of his fandom of the Chicago Bears. I think Obama is perfectly capable of “regular guy,” “beer test” appeal, despite the egghead tag the Republicans are trying to affix to him.
RTFirefly, those polls are interesting, but we are way too far out for such polling to mean much. It’s still just name recognition for most folks at this point. (Besides which, it’s state-by state polling that will really matter.)
Looking at the numbers, though, I must say it is a frustrating quirk of our nomination process that the two candidates most likely to be effective in a general election (McCain and Edwards) are unlikely to have that chance.
And to bring it back to the OP, I expect Huckabee’s numbers in head-to-head polling to steadily rise as he becomes better known among the general populace.
Where Hillary, Edwards, Obama, Rudy, and McCain are concerned, I’d say that’s not the case. The % of people who don’t know who any one of them are is down into the single digits.
You’re right with respect to Romney and Huckabee though: about 20% of Americans don’t know who Mitt is, and as of the most recent polls (taken 11/30 - 12/2/07), about 1/3 didn’t know who the Huckster was (although I bet that’s decreased substantially just in the past 10 days.)
I keep coming back to MI. If Huck wins MI he’s unstoppable, rolling through SC and FL and picking up the evangelical vote nationwide on Super Tuesday while the anti-Huck forces are divided.
If Romney follows up a NH win with a MI win, then he’s the anti-Huck, and does well enough on Super Tuesday to keep the contest going.
If McCain wins NH, then Huck probably wins MI over a wounded Mitt.
ContraSam Stone in the other horse-race thread, second place in IA/NH/wherever gets you nothing in this game, unless it’s a damned impressive second. For instance, if Fred gets 30% in Iowa, finishing second to Huck, he’s got some game in SC. If Mitt craters in IA and Fred finishes second there with 15%, that and $2 gets him a cup of coffee.
All sorts of interesting stuff in the past day or so.
Lieberman endorses McCain. That’s a big leg up for McCain in the Beltway pundit primary, and should continue to diminish his cred with the GOP base. It’s hard to see that it’s going to help him much with the independent/crossover voters in NH who propelled him to the front in 2000 - Lieberman doesn’t have that much of a following outside of CT, and the ind/crossovers are mostly going to vote in the Dem primary this time anyway.
Rudy shifts resources from NH to FL. (Same link.)
I really don’t see a McCain breakthrough in NH this time. Could happen, simply because the GOP primary voters are unhappy with everybody, but with 22 days until NH, time’s running out, and Romney’s numbers are steady.
Huck’s in a statistical dead heat with Rudy in Illinois, a Super Tuesday state. With Huck’s having pulled into a statistical dead heat with Rudy nationally as well, Rudy’s ‘wait for FL and Super Tuesday’ gambit looks shakier all the time.
Right now, the Huckster has to be considered the frontrunner for the nomination. At least until the next surprise.
Even ignoring ARG (you’re probably used to my longstanding ARG skepticism by now; they often see things nobody else sees), the Rasmussen 12/18 poll and the 12/17-19 Gallup/USA Today poll have McCain at 27% in NH, with Mitt at 31% and 34% respectively, Rudy at 13% and 11%, respectively, Huck at 11 and 9, Ron Paul at 7 and 9, and Freddy at 4 and 3.
And, speaking of people who see things nobody else sees, somebody noticed that in his speech a couple weeks back about the role of his faith, he said he’d seen his father, the late Gov. George Romney, march with Martin Luther King, Jr. As far as anyone can tell, the senior Romney never marched with King. Many people have accepted Romney’s willing to change his every political position, but he’s getting a bit of flak over changing his family history.
He’s held up well so far, between spending millions of his own money on his campaign, and being the least insane member of the GOP field. But he only needs to lose maybe five percentage points’ worth of support in NH to lose to McCain, and this may just be the thing that does it.
Apparently King and the elder Romney were in seperate civil rights marches the same week in June 1963. Romney Sr. said he was going to march in the King march, but couldn’t because it was on a Sunday, and therefore against his religion. But Romney marched in another march a few days later for fair housing.
Hmmm. Romney’s been saying it all depends on what your definition of ‘saw’ is. The thrust of this article seems to be that it all depends on what your definition of ‘with’ is.
Given the obvious Clintonian echoes here, I really don’t think he’s going to get away from this unscathed.
Maybe he can capitalize on an Iowa win, and come from way behind to win NH. But while Romney and McCain are fighting over NH, Michigan’s gonna be wide open. Getting there first, on the heels of a big win in Iowa, would likely give the Huckster a big boost in Michigan, leaving Romney and McCain to play catch-up after NH. If Huck wins MI as well as Iowa, what’s to stop him from rolling through SC, FL, and into the Super Tuesday primaries with the hot hand?
I’ve been saying for awhile that Michigan’s gonna be important. Now I’m convinced of it. Unless either (a) the NH winner can beat Huck in Michigan, or (b) something else happens to derail Huck’s candidacy, Michigan could be the decisive win for Huck.
Thirteen days until Iowa. And then things start happening very, very fast.
Polling is unreliable. You will get honest polling numbers just before the election occurs. Then the polling service will talk about how good they were. The numbers right now are crappy.
