This Is Why Huckabee Is a Contender

The media like to stick with the simple meme of "Huckabee: Evangelical candidate whose appeal is limited to religious nuts" because that conforms to their prejudices. But if you watch what's going on, Huck has run anything but a simple culture-war campaign. (For that, see Alan Keyes, who, in case you didn't notice, is decidedly not a contender.)

Yes, Huckabee is solid on the social issues, which is important to many Republicans (and, by the way, to many blue-collar and non-white Democrats, too). That makes him palatable to middle America in a way that Rudy Giuliani, or possibly even Mitt Romney or John McCain, may not be. But Huckabee also does something revolutionary for a Republican -- he speaks sincerely to middle-class concerns.

So we get the above ad, in which Huckabee sounds the themes of lost manufacturing jobs, the credit crunch, high fuel costs, and health-care uncertainty. Even if he is lacking in coherent policy prescriptions for these problems (and, indeed, he is), at least he takes them seriously. This is in stark contrast to most Republicans, who generally only deride as free-market apostates anyone who complains that just maybe our current market/financial system is occasionally destructive to family values.

Huckabee, if nothing else, understands that a party that purports to be pro-family needs to take such matters seriously. Moreover, he understands that a party that dismisses middle-class concerns is one destined for long-term minority status. So he's willing to buck some of the GOP's special interests, and make an appeal directly to the public.

Don't get me wrong: I am fully aware of his faults. But I wonder if these might be outweighed by the reality that Huckabee alone -- of all of both parties' candidates -- is capable of realigning politics in a way that could rock our current order. Pundits who write him off as little more than 2008's version of Pat Robertson are missing the bigger picture ... and might find themselves surprised.