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Rudy Giuliani vs. Ron Paul Update: Michigan

Ron Paul beat Rudy Giuliani in Michigan. Wasn't even close this time: Paul came in 4th and Giuliani came in 6th. I know Rudy is going to (somehow) come back and surprise everyone with a blowout Florida victory, but Ron Paul -- Ron freakin' Paul -- has now won more votes than him in not one but two states. My summer prediction that Giuliani would lead Christian conservatives to a new vision of political engagement based on anti-Islam militarism rather than cultural conservatism is seeming less and less likely.

As a side note, some have suggested Paul's strong showing relative to Giuliani means Giuliani should be the one networks consider not including in the debates, not Paul. The only problem is that while Giuliani is doing exceptionally poorly in the polls, if he is the Republican nominee, he has a pretty high ceiling for voters that would come around to him. Even if GOP voters prefer Mitt Romney, John McCain, or Mike Huckabee, at least 95% of them would vote for Giuliani if he's the party's nominee. A GOP campaign headed by Paul, on the other hand, would be the closest thing to a repeat of the 1964 Barry Goldwater candidacy that's possible in today's Republican party.

Something I Never Thought I'd Read

The Corner: "I think Rudy really, really has to beat Ron Paul tomorrow and place fourth."

Is Mike Huckabee a Populist?

Maybe. At least if, as Matthew Yglesias suggests, "[p]opulism is a political style," not a specific set of policy proposals. This is why there are both left- and right-wing populists. Huckabee is the closest to the latter in the current Republican race, while John Edwards is the the closest to the former in the Democratic race. Huckabee at the very least has that folksy charm thing down. Or, as Kate Sheppard more cleverly puts it, "He's down to earth -- even if he thinks the earth is only 6,000 years old!" Which, in a way, helps. Populism at its core is not an intellectual endeavor. William Jennings Bryan was in some ways even more of a populist because he eschewed the scientific establishment and advocated a biblical literalist understanding of the world. So yes, Mike Huckabee is a populist. But he's the kind even Fair Tax advocates and creationist school board members can heart.

Endorsement of the Day

Chuck Norris for Mike Huckabee.

Ron Paul Update: White Supremacy Edition

Ron Paul has a lot of support from -- drum roll, please -- white supremacists who agree with his crankish and/or obscure monetary policies and general isolationist tone. Thomas Edsall writes:

The white nationalist and anti-Semitic support flowing to the Paul campaign reflects one of the difficulties facing candidates who do not fall into the midstream: that often their views on less controversial subjects like trade and the power of the federal government to take property through eminent domain also appeal to extremist groups.

In most likely unrelated news, Pollster.com is now including Paul in their state charts along with Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee. Paul thus continues his trend of having no chance of winning the GOP nomination but making things endlessly interesting in continually surprising new ways.

Whither the Christian Right?

Matthew Yglesias thinks James Dobson is completely serious about supporting a third party Christian Right candidate:

The best thing is for a pro-life Republican to win the White House. But for a pro-choice Republican to win is worse than for a pro-choice Democrat to win, because it would undermine the narrative that abortion criminalization is a winning electoral issue for conservative politicians. If Rudy gets the nomination as a pro-choicer, I think Dobson et. al. have no choice but to try to throw the race to the Democrats, in order to make the argument that Republicans can only win if they run pro-life campaigns.

"The mere fact of a Democrat in the White House doesn't threaten their power nearly as much as a pro-choice Republican would," he later adds. Scott Lemieux feels otherwise:

I don't mean to discount the possibility entirely, but I do think it takes a pretty cynical view of Dobson's motives ("cynical", of course, doesn't mean "wrong.") If we assume that Dobson wants to maximize his personal power, he's almost obligated to mount a third-party campaign if Giuliani wins. If we assume, however, that he cares most about achieving anti-legal-abortion (for poor women) policy objectives, he's not going to mount a campaign.

Sarah Posner agrees with Lemieux, but for different reasons:

The idea that the Christian right would endorse a third-party candidate is ludicrous, given its pathological need to defeat Hillary Clinton and ultimately maintain sway over the White House. Focus on the Family's James Dobson has a history of threatening defection from the GOP to endorse a third-party candidate. He has never followed through because he's savvy enough to know it would render him irrelevant.

Interestingly, Posner sides with Yglesias on the cynical view of Dobson as power-seeker, but views his options as exactly the opposite of what Yglesias sees: For Yglesias, Dobson cares mostly about power and supporting a third party run against Giuliani is how to maintain that; for Posner, Dobson cares mostly about power and not supporting a third party run against Giuliani is how to maintain that. Here, Lemieux is actually on Yglesias' side, but thinks Dobson is ultimately more motivated by a personal opposition to abortion.

So...who's right? I think it's hard to separate Dobson as power seeker from Dobson as moral opponent of abortion. The two go hand is hand for him. He has a bit of a savior complex and thinks the best way to end abortion is for him to remain powerful indefinitely. I'm inclined to agree with Yglesias that the third party threat is a real and valid one, although it could certainly fall through some time over the next six months, particularly if one of the other GOP candidates comes through: It's commonly cited that Dobson hasn't said anything particularly mean about Mitt Romney, but will socially conservative Christians vote for a Mormon? Will Mike Huckabee surprise in Iowa and finally become a valid first tier candidate? If neither of these happen, just how much of a political risk will Dobson et. al. be willing to take? Not sure, but I can't wait to find out.

I'm Not Racist, I'm Just Saying Barack Obama is Black

"If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee," Andrew Sullivan writes, "some in the GOP will want to make an issue of his race - not merely because of racism, but because in their desire to maintain power they have a record of using every weapon to hand." And it will be subtle:

So much of this will take the form of legitimate questions that nonetheless help impress upon white voters that this guy is black. You saw it with the 24-hour news cycle emphasis on his recent preaching in a black church (a pretty major non-event that accrued more interest than a serious energy speech); and you will see it in references to the congregation he has long belonged to in Chicago. Again: legitimate coverage of legitimate issues, but loaded with the racial angle.

This is a solid point, except that Sullivan is waffling a bit by trying to differentiate "racism" and a "desire to maintain power...using every weapon at hand." If a political party uses race to divide and conquer, it doesn't really matter whether the individual GOP actors really hate black people. What matters is what their policy of seeming to hate black people does in the end. Call it the George Wallace conundrum. It's still a racist tactic, just updated for contemporary tastes.

Time for a History Lesson

I'm begrudgingly watching the All American Presidential Forum with (some of) the Republican candidates. They keep referencing various good things Republicans have done for black people, but there's a catch:

None of them happened in the past 50 years. Most of them didn't happen in the past century.

Except for some nonsense about "a rising tide lifts all boats" Reaganism, the most recent viable example anyone has given is President Dwight Eisenhower's decision to send troops to Arkansas to integrate Central High. This was in 1957.

Then there's Reconstruction and the fact that Republicans put up the first black members of Congress. Reconstruction ended in 1877.

And the GOP candidates keep criticizing the Democrats for their very real past racism, but do so while losing any sense of history. By the 1960s, the white supremactist sect of the Democratic Party was starting to crumble and black support for the Republican Party was shifting steadily to the Democrats. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and effectively traded Southern white racists for the rights of African Americans.

What happened to those white supremacist former Democrats? That's right, they became Republicans. Which is precisely why none of the candidates can name any positive thing Republicans have done for black people since the Eisenhower Administration.

Huckabee on the South's Racist History

Via TNR, here's a speech Governor Mike Huckabee gave in 1997 to "commemorate, not celebrate" the events surrounding the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, forty years earlier. On the role of churches:

And what is really tragic that we today come to renounce is the fact that in many parts of the South it was the white churches that helped not only ignore the problems of racism, but in many cases actually fostered those feelings and sentiments. And today, we call upon every church, every pulpit, every synagogue, every mosque in every part of Arkansas and the rest of the world to say never, never, never, never again will we be silent when people's rights are at stake.

Acknowledging the extent to which the white protestant church was directly involved in maintaining white supremacy in the Jim Crow South is a key part of coming to grips with the region's tortured history. It's not so far removed; many people's grandparents grew up in it. Huckabee downplays the far-reaching nature of this a little bit, but it's good to see he mentioned it nonetheless. He later continues:

Some have asked: how long are we going to deal with this Central crisis situation? Are we going to have to relive it every few years? And I know there were some who were frankly made to feel very uncomfortable about all of these activities because some felt that it would just resurrect feelings and anxieties.

Well, let me tell you how long we will deal with it -- until justice is the same for every human being whether he or she is black or white, we will deal with it. Until the same rules apply to get a bank loan for every person regardless of who he or she is, we will deal with it. As long as there are whites who turn around and see a black person coming and bring fear to their hearts, we will deal with it. And as long as there are blacks who look and see and have resentment toward a white person, we will deal with it.

White resentment is a key obstacle to addressing the history and contemporary reality of racial injustice in the South. Huckabee's declaration that we have to "deal with it" until it's truly solved is pretty strong stuff for a white Republican governor. Not exactly enough to make me consider voting for the guy, but an example of where the Republican Party needs to go if it wants to remain relevant in an increasingly diverse society.

Something to Keep in Mind

Matt Zeitlin makes a good point:

Atwater’s strategy can’t explain how Nixon won every state except Massachusetts in 72 or how Reagan swept the table minus Minnesota in 84. The Democrats had some major issues between 1972 and 1992, and the GOP relied on racist instincts to put the South in their column. We shouldn’t let one of these facts obscure the other.

True enough. There are more than good old boys in the Grand Old Party. No matter how ugly and unfortunate Republican strategizing sometimes gets, sheer Democratic incompetence usually deserves part of the blame for the GOP's electoral victories (most recently, see: Kerry, John).