Huckabee and His Base: 2008 and 2012

Over at RightOSphere, blog contributor Jonathan has a blog post identifying reasons Huckabee ultimately failed to win the nomination in 2008 — despite his thrilling surge from asterisk to frontrunner. Here is one of his observations, followed by my commentary:

1.) Failure to expand his base: This could mean several things. Mostly though, I see it as unable to show the voters that Huckabee was anything more than the evangelical candidate in the field. True, he did make an attempt to become the voice of the blue-collar worker, but that mainly turned blue-collar voters against Mitt Romney (“I want to be like the guy you work with, not like the guy who laid you off”).

Read the whole thing...

Commentary: This did hurt Huckabee in 2008, and it will be a challenge again in 2012. Evangelicals composed the backbone of his early support and he was not ashamed to identify himself as a Christian and former pastor. That said, what hurt him most was not his own actions — but the attempts of many in the media to pigeonhole his campaign and supporters. It may not have been malicious, but it was still inaccurate.

At times it seemed like Huckabee was more often referred to as a "former pastor" than as a "former governor." The New York Times story on Huck's Army focused on "young evangelicals," but never mentioned that only two of the four members they interviewed fit that description — our organizer in Michigan was Roman Catholic and our organizer in South Carolina was an agnostic. Back in Oregon, my Portland-area Meetup group attracted independents who liked the FairTax and Democrats who appreciated his stance on energy independence and the environment. Calling Huckabee the "evangelical candidate" is convenient, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

On the economy, Huckabee deserves a lot more credit than just "mak[ing] an attempt to become the voice of the blue-collar worker." He was the only candidate, starting in 2007 (2007!), who was willing to say the US economy was not doing well — particularly for working-class Americans. Simply by merit of a lack of competition, Huckabee was the voice of the blue-collar worker in 2008. And it earns him a ton of credibility for 2012.

Speaking of credibility, I think Huckabee is poised to make big strides in expanding his base in 2012 with another group: minorities. In Arkansas, Huckabee received 48 percent of the black vote — a historic number in a heavily Democrat-leaning state. In 2008, he was the only big-name (eventually) candidate willing to appear at the PBS presidential debate on minority issues — to rave reviews. There are already a lot of black voters who love Huckabee, and I think that support will only grow in 2012.

The same is true about the Latino vote. In Arkansas and since, Huckabee has been one of the few reasonable conservatives on immigration — dealing with the children of illegal immigrants, voicing concern over the Arizona law, and opposing GOP calls to change the 14th Amendment. While some on the right have (and will) attack him, his principled stands, along with his early support of Marco Rubio, boost his standing with a very large, traditionally socially conservative, but not traditionally Republican demographic.

All this is on top of Huckabee's expanding appeal through his hit TV show "Huckabee," his ABC radio commentary, and growing political media presence. In sum, on the issue of expanding his base, the future looks bright for Governor Huckabee.