According to this exit poll [Exit Polls: South Carolina CNN.com 01/19/08], 60 percent of [South Carolina]’s voters identified as evangelicals, but Huckabee failed to get a majority of them yet again – 43 percent. He only polled 14 percent among those who were non-evangelical. My calculations show that around 85 percent of Huckabee voters were evangelical. Through five contests he’s proven incapable of expanding his base, which spells doom for him the way the race stands now.This tells me a couple of things. The Huck hasn't yet been able to sway many Republican voters with his theocratic message outside of the core Christianists. Of course, the Christianists are the most important part of the Party base. So that doesn't mean he's no longer a serious candidate, by any means.
For now the entire Republican field, with the exception of Duncan Hunter, is staying in. Even in the event that someone dropped out, though, I’m not sure that Huckabee would be able to siphon off that many supporters. There’s been some speculation that Thompson hurt Huckabee in SC, but it may not be as simple as that. Thompson polled evenly among evangelicals and non-evangelicals. Huckabee could expect some of the evangelical portion of that, but it’s not clear how much. From what I know of Thompson voters they’re for Reagan-conservative values – which is not exactly Huck’s brand of conservatism.
It also tells me that of the current Republicans candidates, it's Huckabee's theocratic message delivered with cornpone posturing that resonates most strongly with the Christianist Republican base. Far and away. So the Huck's campaign is giving us a better public look than we've had in a while at where the Christian Right will take us if pro-democracy voters allow them to.
Tags: christian right, christianism, mike huckabee
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It also tells me that of the current Republicans candidates, it's Huckabee's theocratic message delivered with cornpone posturing that resonates most strongly with the Christianist Republican base. Far and away. So the Huck's campaign is giving us a better public look than we've had in a while at where the Christian Right will take us if pro-democracy voters allow them to.
Perceptive.
I was never one of the Democratic activists who salivated over the prospect over Huckabee as an opponent, on the grounds that he would melt in the general election like a ton of thermite.
Such an electoral victory would provide short term glee for the good guys, after which the Christianists would be forgotten as an electoral force.
The losers would not forget. They would go to ground, nurse their grievances, and organise for revenge. (Think of 17 year cicadas, only armed and angry.) As with the Goldwater Republicans, they would emerge a generation later to lay waste to my beloved country.
Better that they be put down by their own party, as too extreme even for the extremists.
And in the 1980 election, the Democrats mostly thought Ronald Reagan would be easy to beat.
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