The WSJ, the anti-tax jihadists

at the Club For Growth, the National Review

– these pillars of Old School Republicanism

have signaled that Huckabee is Not One of Ours

But they’re careful to say it’s not about class,

because, of course – it is!

Among fellow Republican candidates, Huckabee is

certainly “not one of them” in the bottom-line sense

All the other leading contenders would be comfortable

on the massage table at a Trump seaside resort,

in between seminars on how to keep

poor people from getting health care

Huckabee tells audiences that he is one generation

removed from folks who slept on a dirt floor,

and that he’s the first person in

his family to graduate from high school

It’s a terrific narrative, as American as they come

Making Republicans Nervous

Mike Huckabee's Iowa win is certainly dramatic, considering that just three months ago he was one of those candidates usually included in the catch phrase "the rest."

But it's worth remembering that winning Iowa hasn't had all that much to do with winning the White House in recent history.

Huckabee Revels in the Class War [Original]

For my family, summer was never a verb - Mike Huckabee

The rap against Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and ex-Arkansas governor now doing for the Republican Party establishment what three-alarm chili does for an afternoon nap, is that he’s too inexperienced to be president, too naïve — a rube straight out of Dogpatch.

Few of Huckabee’s critics have actually come out and said what many of them think. The language is coded, as it usually is with class and race in this country.

The Wall Street Journal, the anti-tax jihadists at the Club For Growth, the National Review – these pillars of Old School Republicanism have signaled that Huckabee is Not One of Ours. But they’re careful to say it’s not about class, because, of course – it is!

Class war is forbidden in the Republican playbook. But Huckabee, despite an inept last week of campaigning, has forced the Republican party to face the Wal-Mart shoppers that they have long taken advantage of. He’s here. He’s Gomer. And he’s not going away.

Huckabee revels in the class war. He’s Two-Buck Huck, and darn proud of it. He likes nothing better than playing the Hick from Hope. He and his wife lived in a trailer for a while, he points out.

His son killed a dog one summer, “a mangy dog” at that, as Huckabee explained to the befuddled national press corps. He said he used to eat squirrels, cooking them up in his popcorn popper. Ewwwwhhh!

And what’s up with that Chuck Norris shadow, following him everywhere like a late-night rerun? To the establishment, Norris is a B-lister with a bad hair dye and a ’70s-era karate shtick. They prefer Bruce Willis – bald Republican action hero.

Huckabee has been telling people in Iowa that Republican higher-ups would never let him become the nominee because he “has a hick last name.” Wow. I’d like to be in on that focus group.

“For my family, summer was never a verb,” he says. Take that, Mitt Romney and your perfect family, costumed in Ralph Lauren casual wear down by the shore.

And this: “Wall Street types are afraid to death of a guy like me.” You mean, a guy who lost 110 pounds and cooks squirrels in his popcorn popper?

In his book “From Hope to Higher Ground,” Huckabee wrote that just before he moved into the governor’s mansion, “dozens of hate-filled letters proclaimed that we lacked the class to live in such a fine and stately home.”

Of course, he didn’t help himself when he finally moved out of the mansion and into a fine and stately home of his own.

A gift registry was set up so people could help the Hucks furnish their new 7,000-square-foot casa.

This from a man who accepted more than $130,000 worth of gifts as governor, everything from a $600 chain saw to a discount card at Wendy’s.

At the root of all the sniping at Huckabee, he sees a common cause. Some powerful Republicans dislike him, he said on the “Today Show,” because “I’m not one of them.”

It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something that looks like the real thing comes along, the Republican royalists get apoplectic.

They were appalled at the recent YouTube debate because it looked like a parody of one faction of their party – complete with Bible-waving wackos, trigger-happy gun nuts and Confederate-flag enthusiasts.

Among fellow Republican candidates, Huckabee is certainly “not one of them” in the bottom-line sense.

All the other leading contenders would be comfortable on the massage table at a Trump seaside resort, in between seminars on how to keep poor people from getting health care.

Romney, with a net worth estimated by Money magazine at upwards of $250 million, made his pile with an investment firm.

Rudolph Giuliani is close to the $50 million club, enriched by such heavy-lifting as trying to help the makers of OxyContin stay out of jail.

Huckabee tells audiences that he is one generation removed from folks who slept on a dirt floor, and that he’s the first person in his family to graduate from high school. It’s a terrific narrative, as American as they come.

There is some evidence that he’s bringing lower-income Americans into the party. The latest Des Moines Register poll shows that Huckabee runs strongest among people earning $50,000 or less a year.

Still, there’s not much for the other end to fear from Huckabee. He bashes the “Wall Street to Washington axis.”

But would he put some restraint on the new Gilded Age titans, or abolish the gravy train that lets guys like Fred Thompson and Trent Lott get rich by selling the ex-senator part of their resume? Nope.

And his astonishingly regressive tax plan, getting rid of the income tax for one that takes revenue from sales, would do for the rich what the late Leona Helmsley did for her dog in that infamous will.

Republicans in the three-home set should relax. Huckabee may occasionally lack class, but he’s no class warrior. You can have him over for dinner. Honest. Just hide the popcorn popper.

A Republican As Class Warrior

It's clear that Huckabee doesn't like Romney, but not just because Romney has gone negative. Huckabee doesn't like what Romney represents: someone who has the means to outspend him in Iowa 20 to 1 (a ratio Huckabee constantly points out), someone who can "buy" Iowa and perhaps the GOP nomination.

America, he tells supporters in Marshalltown, "is not about the people born on third base and who think they just hit a triple. It's about people who start from nowhere."

Huckabee is the one Republican candidate in the race who has talked often about working class and the anxieties they have even in an economy that by the numbers looks pretty good.

In an interview aboard the Huckabus, the candidate once again discussed the economic situation of "people at the lower ends of the economic scale," who because of rising energy, health care, and education prices "don't have the same level of disposable income they had this time a year ago."

The real story of the Huckabee campaign is that his candidacy contemplates a refashioning of the Republican party to address the concerns of middle and working class Americans.

Thus, while it's true that many of these Americans are also religious conservatives--and true, too, that Huckabee leads among Iowa's religious conservatives by a very wide margin--it's a mistake to think that his campaign is narrowly pitched to that group of voters.

Huckabee has yet to fashion economic policies that might appeal to working class voters--"Sam's Club Republicans," as they have been called, in contrast to the old "country club Republicans." But at some point his campaign presumably will have to offer policies to match his rhetoric.

What was striking about the rallies I saw was the extent to which Huckabee hopes to make common cause with people like himself--"who don't necessarily have the right pedigree .  .  . or the right last name .  .  . or all the resources"--in order to defeat his opponents.

Thus, in Waterloo, he told the audience, "Nothing more gets to the heart of what we are than to say that no matter where you came from, or what your last name is, or what your parents were, or what they do for a living, you matter. You may not pick where you started from, but you have every opportunity to decide where you end up."

That "you" is not an impersonal usage. As he told the audience, "I've lived the life many of you have lived."

As for his opponents, they include not just the Republican establishment but also evangelical leaders he regards as part of the establishment; the "chattering class" of both old and new media; and secularists hostile to expressions of faith in public life.

In Cedar Rapids, before a gathering of the Iowa Christian Alliance, Huckabee defended the TV Christmas ad in which he mentions "the birth of Christ."

He remarked on "the level of true religious bigotry that exists in our culture--that for those of us who are people of faith, it's okay to have it but please keep it to yourselves."

With so much at stake, Huckabee, 12 years a Baptist pastor, rises to the occasion in closing these rallies.

He urges his audience to "stop and think about" the fact that "my opponent has outspent me 20 to 1." He assumes their solidarity: "Some of you in this room feel like your whole life you've had the odds against you. . . . You know how frustrating it can be."

He explains that the reason he is ahead is that "there are a lot of Americans who feel like they've got odds about 20 to 1 stacked against them. They know they don't have the last name that opens the door.

"They know they don't have the pedigree [or] . . . the friend in high places that gets things done for them. They like to believe that a guy who lives their life can become president."

Why? "Because they know if that can happen still in this country, then we're a nation that cannot be bought off"--meaning by the likes of Mitt Romney.

"Nor can we be told what to do "by those chattering-class folks in Washington and Wall Street who think the world is all about them." And as for the Republican establishment, to Huckabee, it's us versus them:

"They don't mind having us vote for them. They don't mind having us empower them. They don't mind even coming and patting us on the head and telling us they'll think very seriously about taking to heart the issues we think important.

"But when they get elected, they forget who we are and they never push the issues we think are important.

"And they are scared to death that someone who isn't part of them might actually get elected and might actually go to Washington with a view saying "I do know where I come from and I haven't forgotten where I've been and I go for all those people whose odds are stacked against them 20 to 1."

Huckabee sees Iowa as nothing less than the beginning of the change he envisions. "Folks," he closed his speech in Marshalltown:

"If we can do it, we'll change politics in this country and we won't turn it upside down but we'll turn it right side up, like it ought to. That's what America is supposed to be. Not a nation of a ruling class and a servant class.

"The way our Founding Fathers had it, the ruling class is the regular folks out there voting, the servant class is the one who gets elected.

"We're not elected to be the ruling class, we were elected to be the servant class serving the people who are the ruling class. Let's make that happen."

If it does, look for a profusion of new Huckawords to describe the shifting political landscape.