How Huckabee Might Win

In a brilliant study of the Republican nominating
electorate, Henry Olsen identifies four kinds of Republican primary and caucus
voter. The breakdown of those groups gives Mike Huckabee a chance to emerge as
the Republican nominee. From largest to smallest, these groups are the somewhat
conservative, moderates and liberals, conservative evangelicals,
and economically very conservative secular voters.

The two last groups might best be understood in their relations
to social and economic issues. What Olsen calls conservative
evangelicals might be called social conservatism-first voters. They are
a little more open to a larger government (relative to other Republican
factions, not relative to the Democrats). What Olsen calls the “very
conservative, secular voters” might be called the economic conservatism-first
voters. They are in favor of more radical free market economic change than
the other Republican factions, are relatively indifferent to social issues,
and are turned off by displays of religiosity.

The largest
group is the “somewhat conservative” voters. These voters are both socially and
economically conservative, but they are also conservative in the sense of being
cautious. They don’t find political crusades appealing, and don’t want change
to be any bigger than is necessary. They also like their presidential
candidates to be experienced office holders and plausible presidents. This
group wants a winner. That means that any candidate that wins their
support must seem to have a plausible chance to win over enough swing voters to
win the presidential election. These voters are conservatives, but they are
suspicious of radicalism. They are not voting to affirm an identity. They
are voting to elect a president.

One potential
strategy is to unite the right of the party by bringing together the social
conservatism-first voters and the economic conservatism-first
voters. After all, both groups are very conservative in their own
way. There is some reason to think that the voters of these two groups could
end up in the same camp. Olsen places Herman Cain in the “very conservative,
secular” category. Cain’s support in the national polls peaked at 25-30 percent. That is a bigger
number than you would get from just his very conservative, economic
issues-first base. My guess is that Cain was getting substantial support
from “conservative Evangelical,” social issues-first voters. Cain’s
surge in Iowa polls (which was slightly larger
than his surge in the national polls) might be another indicator.

My
guess is that many social conservatism-first voters are initially quite
receptive to radical tax changes cooked up by very conservative, secular
politicians. Those tax changes are sold as increasing transparency and
fairness. It is also implied that, when the special interests are hammered, the
average hard working American will see a tax cut. This seems like a basis for a
unite-the-right strategy. The problem is that the social conservative support
for the radical tax changes doesn’t last.

Huckabee
tried a version of this unite-the-right strategy in the 2008 cycle. He
was the favorite of social conservatives, but he was also for
replacing our current tax system with a national sales tax. The problem for the
Huckabee and Cain (well, Cain had lots and lots of problems) was that this
alliance is tough to pull off. It turns out that the constituency for radical
tax policy changes is very limited—at least for the kinds of radical changes
that have been proposed. When voters look at the distributional of the
flat tax, or the national sales tax, or Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, they recoil. The
median voter isn’t going to go for it and neither are the “somewhat
conservative” voters. This kind of strategy is especially bad for a
conservative Evangelical favorite like Huckabee. He is never going to be the
first choice of theWall Street Journaleditorial page or the
2014-model George Will. Proposing these kinds of radical tax changes also cuts
off a social conservative candidate from the “somewhat conservative” voters. The
tax radicalism marks you as an unserious candidate and a general election
disaster, when somewhat conservative voters want a competent winner.

Assuming
Huckabee could consolidate the social conservatism-first vote, he would be
better off going after the “somewhat conservative” voters. He is pretty good at
making social conservatism unthreatening. The “somewhat conservative” are the
largest pool of voters and he is probably ideologically closer to them than to
the very conservative, secular voters. He can’t be dismissed as just some
senator who made his name with public relations gestures. Huckabee has a
record as a state governor. What he needs to do is show that he has the other
qualities that somewhat conservative voters value.

Huckabee
needs to come across as solid, well briefed, and reformist-but-not-radical on
economic policy. This a place where low expectations and a pleasant
personality are Huckabee’s friends. If Scott Walker gives a good answer on the
economy, it won’t be any kind of story. Huckabee is a more charming guy and,
for many in the media, “Evangelical conservative who knows stuff” is a man
bites Martian story. The trick is that Huckabee’s economic populism needs to be
a middle-class-oriented reformism that seems to add up. He needs to come
across as a more charsmatic version of Mike Lee at AEI,
not a more personable version of Michele Bachmann on MSNBC. It also means he
can’t fake it anymore. In the 2008 cycle, when he was asked about health care
policy, he would sometimes try to shift the discussion to the time he lost lots
of weight. That answer is good enough for an identity politics candidate who is
just trying to up his Q-Score. It won’t be good enough for Huckabee
to get the nomination. He needs to sound a little bit like James Capretta. It
would be very reassuring.

The
good news is that while there will be multiple candidates fighting for those
“somewhat conservative” voters (Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio
all come to mind), Huckabee will be the candidate least beholden—either
mentally or financially—to the Washington lobbyist complex. While the other
candidates have all made supportive noises in favor of something that
includes legalization before enforcement and expanded low-skill immigration,
Huckabee can run on something that combines enforcement-first to be followed by
a limited amnesty and shifting future immigration flows in the direction
of skills and language proficiency. That is probably much closer to the
position of the party’s median voter than the Senate’s Gang-of-Eight plan. He
could occupy the middle ground between Romney’s “self-deport” and Rubio’s plan
for legalization-first plus expansion of low-skill immigration.

Huckabee
would also have to make a plausible argument for his electability. He would
have to explain how he can reach the working-class whites and persuadable
African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans that rejected Romney. Huckabee
has an instinctive sense of the party’s weakness on economic issues. He
famously said that Romney reminded people of the guy who laid them off and not
the guy they worked with. That could have been the Republican Party’s epitaph
in 2012. Huckabee has to combine his instinctive understanding of the struggles of people at or under
the median, with an agenda for addressing those concerns. Ta-Nehisi Coates thought that Huckabee could be
the Republican candidate to make inroads with African-American
voters in an election that did not have Obama on the ballot.

It
probably isn’t going to happen. Following this strategy would add a lot more
work on top of the fundraising and traveling of a presidential
campaign. It would mean basically studying full time (alongside his other
commitments) for the next eight months and then running for president full
time for another two years. If he ran, he could just cruise along on his
accumulated intellectual capital. That is what every Republican
presidential candidate did in the 2012 cycle—with the notable exception
of Mitt Romney. My feeling is that Huckabee doesn’t want the job of
president badly enough to do all the work. I suspect he won’t even run. That
probably speaks well of him. It is too bad for the rest of us as he seems to be
the only potential candidate with the chance to form a nominating coalition
from social conservative and somewhat conservative voters—and he would be our
best chance to get a Republican nominee who is not in the orbit of the lobbying
industry.