Now I esteem Chuck Norris and three-chord Rock as much as the next guy, but I am still a tad skeptical about Mike Huckabee's chances of winning his party's presidential nomination.
It seems doubtful, for example, that he will carry New Hampshire--if only because Evangelicals there do not comprise anywhere near the 38% of Republican voters that they do in Iowa. It is estimated that about 18% of the Republican electorate in New Hampshire is Evangelical (versus, incidentally, a whopping 53% in South Carolina).
It is for this reason that Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary is our friend, our teacher. It wants to help us answer a question and that question is: will Republicans and Independents with no particular investment in a biblical worldview (though with no particular disdain for it either) find something else about Huckabee that convinces them to vote for him?
I might be wrong but I am going to assume that the answer to that question is “no.” And now Mike Huckabee’s candidacy becomes our friend and our teacher as well. For his autumnal surge permits us to ponder a theory that has been widely discussed over the past year. Namely, that the GOP is a house divided. On one side, so goes the theory, stand the Conservative Christians. On the other, everyone else.
If Huckabee comes in third or worse, it would raise concerns that he only excites the Party’s born-again contingent. If that is indeed the case then the entire forthcoming primary saga will be about finding a consensus candidate. The nominee will have to be acceptable to Evangelicals. But at the same time he will need to receive the support of the pro-Big Business faction, Libertarians, cigar-chomping blue bloods, neo-Conservatives and secular Republicans (remember them?), among others.
Mitt Romney and John McCain make adequate compromise candidates. Both have courted the Evangelical vote (McCain, however, emerged as a suitor only recently) . Both could be acceptable to the non-Christian Conservative wing of the GOP.
Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani are less well suited for this role. Huck--with his FairTax plan, with his informal just-‘a-sittin’-here-eatin’-some-ribs-and-thinkin’-about-the-world approach to foreign policy, with his excessive Christing-up--makes certain types of Republicans very nervous. While Giuliani initially polled well among Evangelicals, the mere presence of a Baptist pastor on the slate may have convinced them that they shouldn’t settle for a pro-Choice candidate whose character issues disturb them.
If Huckabee and Giuliani come to represent two opposing wings of the Party, then Romney, McCain or even Fred Thompson stand to benefit. This is the lesson that New Hampshire might teach us on Tuesday night.
(For more information about religion and the candidates, visit Faith 2008 by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.)
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