From a Place Called Hope

I watched a few minutes of the Republican primary debate today (I couldn't handle more than a few minutes), and happened to stumble upon the following question for all the candidates (slight paraphrase): "In 30 seconds, could you say whether the rich, the middle class, or the poor, are paying a disproportionate amount in taxes, and why?

Mike Huckabee's answer (again, slight paraphrase): "I propose a Fair Tax system --- because it won't make the rich poor, but it just might help make the poor rich."

Really, what can one say? Even making the (completely speculative and probably false) assumption that shifting to a national sales tax would be revenue neutral, by what mechanism could Huckabee imagine that poor people, simply by paying taxes against consumption rather than income, would be propelled into greater wealth? By magic?

Such a combination of a fantastical sermon-on-the-mount inversion and an embarrassing lack of rudimentary comprehension of economics and public policy is more or less a distillation of Huckabee down to his essence. His candidacy is premised on reveling in knowing absolutely nothing, except that all things are possible in the Lord. Want to lower taxes, drastically increase social spending, balance the budget, simultaneously throw out all the Mexican illegal immigrants and give their kids financial aid, reduce energy consumption to zero (note: this would presumably end our obesity problem as it would require us to starve to death), craft a foreign policy both Tom Friedman and Frank Gaffney would approve of? No problem, it can all be done if you believe by virtue of the absurd.

Ross Douthat has gotten a lot of traffic for this post, presenting the lottery paradox that is the Republican primary this year. (The lottery paradox: you believe of each ticket that it's a loser, but also that one of them is a winner.)

And for most of the candidates, it's true --- they're bound to lose. Romney can't win because evangelicals can't stomach Mormonism, and he was a moderate technocrat who was to Ted Kennedy's left on abortion until last week (incidentally, that's why I'll vote for him if it's Romney vs. Clinton). McCain can't win because he's against torture, for sane immigration policy, and for campaign finance reform (I'm with him on two of the three --- I'll let you guess where I disagree) --- each of them potential disqualifiers in a Republican primary, all three of them together effectively ruling him out. Giuliani can't win because, when you run a city the size of New York as if it's your personal fiefdom, criminal corruption becomes part of the job description. Thompson can't win because because he doesn't want to be running.

But Huckabee --- Huckabee can win, pace Ross. What are his downsides? Here are Stephen Bainbridge's reasons for opposing the Huckster:

1. He’s a wowser [Oz slang for someone who gets a kick out of denying pleasure to others]...

2. He’s a religious bigot...

3. He sounds pretty homophobic...

4. Speaking of respect for life, Huckabee supports the death penalty...

5. Speaking of hardened criminals, is Wayne Dumond Huckabee’s Willie Horton?...

6. He’s clueless on foreign policy...

7. Huckabee’s a serial tax hiker...

8. He’s probably a closet economic populist....

Those are all reasons I won't vote for Huckabee. In a Republican primary, #1-#4 are definite assets, #6-#8 have to do with knowledge of policy that voters don't have and will never base their decisions on, and #5, while embarrassing, doesn't play into a narrative of Huckabee as a wimpy liberal (and so isn't his Willie Horton). In other words, in the Republican primary, Huckabee's many, many bugs are features.

He's hardly a lock, but if Huckabee trips up, it won't be because he's running an amateurish and faith-based policy shop. Quite the contrary. You'll often hear pundits express frustration with the fact that candidates won't provide specifics to flesh out their proposals. This is a misplaced frustration since 1) nothing a presidential candidate proposes during a campaign will be enacted in its campaign form and 2) nobody besides pundits and a tiny, extremely educated sliver of the electorate bases his or her voting preferences on finely (or even coarsely) grained policy distinctions. At best, what happens is something like: "Well, Candidate X is for improved education, health care, border security, victory in the war. I'm for all those things. He's got my vote." More pessimistically, if Philip Converse was right, voters don't base their decisions on policy positions at all.

The one obstacle for Huckabee that may prove insuperable is that the GOP establishment really doesn't like him. (Mitt Romney was a guest on Hannity & Colmes tonight, and Hannity took the opportunity to ask Romney what he thought of Huckabee's Dukakis-style furlough programs.) I don't get the hostility. In so many ways, Huckabee is Bush's prodigal son.

UPDATE: Okay, this is a real problem for Huckabee.