Comments on: Iowa

By: Why Now? » Blog Archive » New Hampshire

Why Now? » Blog Archive » New Hampshire — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:25:56 +0000

[…] predictions were: Clinton, Obama, Edwards for the Dems, and McCain, Huckabee, Romney for the […]

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:23:20 +0000

Bloomberg may run if Huckabee is the candidate. I can see Repub donors leaning on him to do it.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:09:35 +0000

Republican turnout is going to be crap, bottom line. And that’s the good news.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:39:46 +0000

I saw your post, Badtux, and I’m aware of the usage. The people who won’t vote for Obama will vote for Huckabee. They will vote Republican, if they vote. That is the problem for the Repubs – if Huckabee isn’t the candidate, they may not vote at all.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:26:23 +0000

Obama is running as the Lawrence Fishburne character in the Matrix movies, so I don’t think race will be an issue here. Sure, many Southerners still won’t vote for a generic “black person”. But Obama isn’t running as generic “black person”. He’s running as a Hollywood archetype — the “magic Negro” who steps in and saves the day for the white folk. Racist white southerners are always quick to remind you that they only dislike “those” blacks, the uppity ones, not the helpful ones. Obama isn’t running as Uncle Tom, but he ain’t runnin’ as Average Joe Negro either — his entire campaign seems built around depicting him as this movie archetype of the larger-than-life “Magic Negro” who steps in to save the day. (Note: Before you flame me, the term “Magic Negro” is something I borrowed from The Black Commentator, which if I recall correctly is a publication of one of the radical black groups, and it is their analysis of black roles in recent Hollywood movies that I am depicting above).

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:49:50 +0000

I’m just thinking about the primary battles, not the general. Huckabee has no chance of taking Florida in the general election, even with the Republican “machine” behind him, but the party activists are evangelicals. He can win Republican primaries in the South and Midwest, but he has no chance in other areas. They are going to need a massive GOTV drive to defeat him down here, and the evangelicals are the people who always handled that.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:05:44 +0000

I think the link is dissolving on its own: the fundagelicals are to the Republicans what most of us have been to the Democrats–ATMs and reliable votes. Both sides of the aisle are waking up and telling the parties that have been taking us for granted for so long that we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

But it’s worse for the Republicans, because while they’ve relied on the evangelical fringe for years as foot soldiers, every other faction in the party looks down on them and despises them. Huckabee won in Iowa largely because of a hugely disparate concentration of evangelical Christians that will be difficult to replicate in other red states with more diverse populations. Ironically, his next best chance would probably be Utah, though this cycle that state’s probably going to stick with its favorite son Willard.

Huckabee’s government credentials don’t look too good from our perspective. But they look even worse from the Republicans’: as witness some of the attack ads that other Republican candidates have already put out about him. He raised taxes in Arkansas, granted clemency to more than a thousand convicted felons, and released a recidivist sex offender. And besides, there are cities in this country that have larger populations and bigger economies than Arkansas. He can try to ride that horse down the campaign trail, but we’ll just laugh at him.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:38:43 +0000

The South is changing, Hipparchia. Not very quickly, to be sure, but there are changes visible in public. The changes to hearts and minds is going to take a lot longer.

They do have a problem, Michael, because he is a former governor, and the evangelicals have been so important to the Repubs retaining power. If they say the wrong thing, they could destroy the link, just as they have destroyed their link to Hispanics. It’s time for another re-invention if they plan to continue as a viable political party. Huckabee isn’t Pat Robertson, he has government credentials.

Huckabee isn’t done, and he has a reasonable chance of winning in Florida. He will certainly take North Florida and the Panhandle away from Giuliani. It will be interesting.

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:37:51 +0000

The official Republican response to Huckabee's win? Damnatio memoriae. The head of the RNC managed to give an entire interview on CNN about the Iowa caucuses without ever once mentioning Huckabee by name.

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:56:05 +0000

i was a bit aggravated by dk’s endorsement of obama, but it wasn’t completely unexpected after that ron-paul-as-running-mate thingy.

otoh, i’m really happy to see obama doing well, and so early too. it’s mighty tempting to see this as a suggestion that we’re maybe might be moving towards being a slightly less racist society.

on the other other hand, it’ll be interesting to see how the southern states vote.

edwards has been my favorite, by a very tiny margin, for a few weeks now, over kucinich. still, i was surprised at how strong a sense of loss i felt when i saw dodd’s announcement.