The Devil His Due

I suppose progressives should sit back and enjoy the moment of schadenfreude provided by the spectacle of secular movement conservatives freaking out over the recent ascension of Mike Huckabee's presidential candidacy. But some important lessons for Democrats and progressives lie therein too, and taking stock of them will play a critical role in their success or failure not just in 2008 but beyond.

The moral to the Huckabee story: You got to dance with the one who brung you.

The conservative movement's core has always been the pro-corporate, pro-business right, but it has swelled its ranks by wrapping itself in a cultural conservatism, built around the religious right, that attracted the votes of a lot of working-class people. Now the rabble, in the person of Huckabee, are threatening to take over, and the secular right doesn't like it a bit.

John Cole calls it "the Huckabee Panic," embodied perhaps by Rich Lowry's anti-Huckabee screed at NRO. As Atrios notes, some of the rhetoric is surprising.

The Carpetbagger Report offered up some ideas as to why this is happening -- including Huckabee's positions on taxes, on foreign policy, and on immigration, which are generally anathema to the secular right. He also notes Kevin Drum's wise observation:

I think this brand of yahooism puts off mainstream urban conservatives every bit as much as it does mainstream urban liberals. They're afraid that this time, it's not just a line of patter to keep the yokels in line.

My own pet theory is that the modern conservative movement, not really based any longer on actual principles but rather being about the acquisition of power, is frightened by Huckabee's candidacy mainly because he is all but certain to lose in the general election.

After all, they've seen the presidential matchup polls, and know that Huckabee loses by a wide margin to most of the major Democrats. Currently, it looks something like this:

Clinton: 54
Huckabee: 44

Obama: 55
Huckabee: 40
Undecided: 1

Edwards: 60
Huckabee: 35
Undecided: 1

Even more disturbing to the non-fundies is the way the dominoes now line up in Huckabee's favor: If he takes Iowa (now a strong likelihood), that sets up a win in South Carolina, where he's also running well. Right on its heels is the big-ticket state of Florida, where Huckabee now leads. After that, he'll be in the catbird seat for Super Tuesday and, essentially, the nomination.

If there's anything the right hates, it's losing. The Huckster looks like a loser to them, and so the long knives are out.

Regardless of the reason for the animus, Democrats are no doubt enjoying the wailing and gnashing of teeth now heard from the non-religious right. But they also ought to take stock of how Huckabee reflects the price paid for political marriages of convenience.

Recently, we've been hearing from some Beltway strategists that Democrats would be smart, electorally speaking, to make gestures of accommodation to the religious and cultural right, including a softening of positions on abortion and a toughening on immigration. That's the same sort of alliance, though, for which Republicans are now paying the price.

Even more important, I think, are the economic dimensions of these alliances. The religious right and corporate conservatives forged an alliance built on the shared ground of their innate authoritarianism; but fundamentalism has always had a deeply populist aspect, which it seemed was going to come inevitably into conflict with the pro-corporate core of the Republican Party.

It is that aspect of Huckabee's politics that may be the real core of the secular right's animus. David Sirota has written quite a bit about Huckabee's economic populism and how its appeal has given him so much traction with voters. Given that such populism is anathema to the corporate worldview, the current backlash probably was quite predictable.

Indeed, economic populism has for many years been mostly the domain of the Democratic Party, dating back at least to the days of William Jennings Bryan, through the New Deal years, and well into '60s and '70s. It was only in the 1990s, with the rise of Bill Clinton's style of triangulation politics, that the Democrats became more open in their embrace of things corporate. It is a style that many progressives remain uncomfortable with, because it is a marriage of convenience that in many regards betrays who they are.

This is the reason so many progressives are uncomfortable with Hillary Clinton as their candidate, and conversely, as Sirota explains in detail, why an economic populist like John Edwards is doing so well with so many voters.

These are the kinds of things progressive voters need to think about in the coming year as they choose their nominee. We shouldn't be taking for granted the fact that Republicans are stumbling badly and the opportunity for Democrats to make major gains in 2008 looms large. We also ought to seize the opportunity to make progressive politics a genuine, viable, and powerful political force for years to come. And that will not happen unless we stop selling our electoral souls to a devil who always wants his due.

Just ask those secular Republicans about that.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future