Want to know how desperate Mike Huckabee is to win the South Carolina primary tomorrow? Well, he’s desperate enough to grab the Third Rail of cultural politics, by identifying himself with bitter-end defenders of the public display of the Confederate flag.
As you may have heard, Huck coupled his state’s-rights-oriented position that “outsiders” shouldn’t tell South Carolinians what flag to fly with a colorful suggestion that said “outsiders” should be told to perform an act that he would otherwise deplore as banned by “God’s standards.” And the line now seems to have become part of Huckabee’s SC stump speech.
It’s pretty odd to hear an “outsider” urge Palmetto State voters to go sodomistic on other “outsiders” for allegedly butting into their sovereign right to celebrate the Lost Cause that this very state plunged the nation into in 1861. Presumably he knows that African-Americans in the state have not been “outsiders” since their arrival on slave ships some time ago. And Huckabee may even be aware that some would question the propriety of raising this issue in the midst of the annual commemoration of Martin Luther King’s legacy. But hey, black folks don’t vote in Republican primaries, right?
Other than reminding voters that he’s from a dixified background himself, Huck seems to be appealing to a small group of voters that in Georgia we refer to as “flaggers,” a small and dwindling segment of largely rural white folk for whom the Confederate flag remains a fighting and voting issue (their impotence was exposed in Georgia when they failed to carry through threats to do political damage to Gov. Sonny Perdue, who reneged on a campaign promise to hold a referendum on the subject). His decision to “go there” is all the more puzzling as part of a campaign tour with former Gov. David Beasley, who infuriated flaggers while in office by removing The Flag from public property.
In any event, even if Huck wins the battle of South Carolina, his decision to embrace this hoary symbol of white supremacy could help lose him the war. Already maginalized as the candidate of conservative evangelicals and not much of anyone else, he now bids fair to make himself a southern regional candidate as well, and divisive even in southern conservative ranks. It’s a sure sign of a campaign that can’t see the forest, or even the trees, and is scratching around in the pine straw for some dirt to throw.

Over at The Plank, Eve Fairbanks exposes herself to several hours of noise pollution from Rush Limbaugh, and reports on the impressive ferocity of his assault on Mike Huckabee and (especially) John McCain. Since McCain remains (in most reckonings) the closest thing to a front-runner in the Republican presidential contest, and could solidify that status in South Carolina on Saturday, the rampant hostility of the still-reigning conservative gasbag could be a bit of a problem for party unity.
But we’ve been here before, at the same juncture in the nominating process, in the same state.
For those of you who don’t remember it, I have to tell you: the full-scale panic that gripped the conservative ideological-and-corporate establishment of the GOP in 2000 after McCain’s trouncing of George W. Bush in NH is hard to over-estimate. Yes, local operatives in SC were responsible for much of the sleazy tactics against McCain in the Palmetto State that helped saved Bush’s bacon, but they were carrying water for the vast coalitiion of Christian Righters, K Street types, and DC careerists who had placed all their chips on the Texan, and who feared McCain in no small part because he owed them nothing.
Yes, I know, I know, since then McCain has mended fences with the conservative establishment by loyally stumping for Bush in 2000 and 2004, kissing up to Christian Right leaders, going apocalyptic about “Islamofascism,” and championing the Iraq escalation. But in the same period of time, he also flirted with a party-switch, voted against Bush’s tax cuts, and cosponsored another twenty-or-so bills with Democrats, including the immigration proposal that looked to have knocked him out of the race just a few months ago. He’s also never renounced the campaign-finance law that ideologues hate with an irrational passion, and opposed torture, which a startling number of conservatives perceive as the worst heresy of all.
So it’s not surprising that Rush and others aren’t being convinced by McCain’s general election poll numbers (he’s currently the only GOPer nationally competitive against Clinton or Obama) to roll over. But they have a real problem. In 2000, it was a simple matter of helping the lavishly financed and well-positioned Bush to croak him in a state or two. Now, for many conventional conservatives (largely, like Rush, more-or-less supporting Romney or what’s left of Fred Thompson), beating McCain is a complex three-cushion-shot game of denying him the nomination without elevating someone they dislike as much or more. After all, if McCain loses SC, Mike Huckabee’s going to win it. If McCain loses momentum, Rudy Giuliani gets his final chance. And if McCain wins the nomination anyway, you’ve got a GOP nominee who will remember all the abuse he’s gotten on his right flank for the last eight years, and a legion of McCain-haters tempted to take a dive and hope for better times in 2012.
To put it another way: if McCain (or for that matter, Huckabee) is the nominee, what are you going to rant about every day if you’r’e Rush Limbaugh? Senate races?
So no wonder Limbaugh is hyperventilating. As in 2000 at this point, it’s cookies-on-the-line time, but this time the odds look really bad for the conservative establishment’s Noise Machine.

The odds are reasonably high that the Mike Huckabee presidential adventure is going to effectively come to an end in South Carolina this weekend, thanks to residual McCain strength in the state and an unlikely but much-reported mini-surge by The Big Dead–er, Fred–Machine.
But if the Huckster’s headed for the exit, he’s going out with flair. In Michigan, and more recently on Fox, the Arkansan has been talking about the need to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it conform with “God’s standards.” This has unsurprisingly led to a revival of commentary referring to Huckabee as a “Dominionist” or “Theocrat.”
As a connoisseur of Christian Right theory and practice, I have to say that while Huckabee may privately be a “dominionist” (and Sarah Posner is undoubtedly right that he’s been appealing to dominionists in the clergy and laity alike), his public pronouncements fall short of that particular uber-heresy.
“Dominionism” (or more formally, Christian Reconstructionism) generally refers to the belief that Holy Scripture should entirely displace secular sources as the legal foundation for society. Its adherents tend to think of the Bible–and specifically, the Mosaic Law–as a sort of Christian Sharia, that provides all necessary and sufficient guidance for the ordering of national and community life.
All Huck’s confessed to, so far as I am aware, is that when the Constitution is directly in conflict with major elements of “God’s standards”–specifically on the subjects of abortion and gay marriage–it should be amended to be brought into conformity. And as he points out, constitutional amendments on both subjects are part of the last Republican Party Platform. He has not, on the other hand, smitten Rudy Giuliani with the classic Dominionist argument that adulterers should be put to death, or suggested that Muslims should be converted to the True Faith on the edge of U.S. bayonets.
I’ve argued with fellow progressives about this for some time, but it bears repeating: if you happen to believe, on religious or other grounds, that legalized abortion is a vast Holocaust (a term Huckabee has used) extinguishing millions of human lives, then it’s not that surprising that you might consider a constitutional amendment to ban it appropriate. And if you also believe that heterosexual marriage is the fundamental pattern of life demanded by God and respected by all civilized societies, a constitutional amendment enshrining that belief isn’t a big reach, either.
Obviously (for anyone who’s read my stuff in the past) I very strongly disagree with Huckabee, on both religious and civic grounds, with respect to these beliefs, but it’s important to understand them instead of conflating them with a totalitarian theocratic ideology that would rewrite the entire constitution (as satirically suggested yesterday by Daily Kos’ Meteor Blades) to smite the infidels.
Ol’ Huck’s platform is nutty, all right, and I’m not one of those Democrats who’s inclined to give him a lot of props for his empty “populist” posturing, either. I’d love to see him get the nomination, because I think it would lead to a Democratic victory of–if you’ll excuse the expression–Biblical proportions. But let’s save the Dominionist tag for the Rough Beast who may someday begin slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

There’s a new article in The Politico by Jim VandeHei and John Harris that sums up the psychological effects of lethargy and low enthusiasm levels among Republicans this year (so far): “GOP funk slows turnout, money.”

Ambitious Republican politicians at the state and local levels are not deciding that this is the year to make a bid for higher office.
Republican contributors are not opening their wallets and writing campaign checks.
Most striking of all, Republican voters are not heading to the polls to vote in the GOP primaries in anything like participation rates of early years.
Most of these trends have been noted and amply commented upon in isolation. It is in combination, however, that their effects tend to reinforce each other and reach maximum toxicity. A disgruntled base is the root cause of weak fundraising, which contributes to poor candidate recruitment, which in turn leads to GOP activists staying on the sofa rather than heading to the polls.

To put it another way, GOPers are beginning to look at 2008 as just a “bad year” for them, like 2006, and maybe even worse.
Another sign of the bad moon rising for Republicans is an editorial in the Washington Times–normally an organ of relentless partisan agitprop–offering a very downbeat assessment of the party’s prospects in Senate races this year, conceding major Democratic gains as virtually inescapable.
It’s a long way to November, obviously, and all sorts of things could change. But as the Politico article suggests, low expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I ended my last post on the Republican presidential contest by stipulating a lack of excitement among GOPers about their current options. That was before I spent some time roaming around the content-rich National Review site, an official Romney for President precinct (though some of its writers have dissented). If this is most enthusiasm these folk can muster in the wake of Mitt’s survival in MI, they’ve got a real problem.
The NR Editors briefly celebrate Romney’s win, before lecturing him about shortcomings in his economic message. NR’s online editor, Kathryn Jean Lopez, allows as how the Romney staffers don’t quite sound like zombies any more.
John J. Pitney, Jr., pens an “electibility” article that begins by acknowledging Mitt’s terrible showing in general election trial heats, and then reviews the even more problematic general election credentials of the rest of the field.
And then there’s a Symposium that centers on the transcendent need for conservatives to beat McCain and Huckabee.
Compare that with what you’d read in virtually any progressive outlet, where there’s enthusiasm for favorites and broad acceptance of the other major candidates, and you begin to see why Democrats are in much better shape at present. There’s so much nose-holding among Republicans right now in expressing a candidate preference that they may be excused for failing to notice a smell of rot surrounding their party as a whole.

The latest strategy memo from Democracy Corps, based on a survey of voters in 65 “battleground” House districts (25 held by Democrats, 40 by Republicans), argues that Democrats should not fear the tax issue this year. Even though the survey was confined to a Republican-leaning segment of the electorate, DCorps found that (a) Republicans don’t have a built-in advantage on the tax issue, (b) voters are more concerned about tax fairness than about the overall level of taxes, (c) a Democratic tax reform proposal based on sunsetting tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminating corporate loopholes decisively trumps a Republican message of making all tax cuts permanent (even when the GOP message tries to exploit fears of Democratic over-spending), and (d) this is equally true in Republican- and Democratic-held districts.
The DCorps findings are significant in ways that go beyond the tax issue. To the extent that the broader Republican economic message depends heavily on faith in high-end tax cutting as a prescription for growth, Republican weakness on such tax policies could undermine their entire economic pitch.
Like Iraq, supply-side economics is becoming a subject where the demands of the conservative GOP base are in direct conflict with what the broader electorate wants. Those who fear that declining levels of interest in Iraq will help Republicans this fall should be comforted; the changing issue landscape is driving the GOP from one horn of their basic dilemma to the other.

Mitt Romney’s win in MI yesterday forestalled the possibility of an early McCain sweep to the GOP nomination. But like Hillary Clinton’s “stunning upset” win in NH, the actual voter dynamics were less dramatic than the perceived impact on the race.
As Jay Cost explains at RealClearPolitics after staring at MI and NH exit polls, Romney and McCain pretty much attracted the same kind of voters in the former state as in the latter. Romney won by marginally improving his performance across the board, and also because the composition of the electorate was a bit different (e.g., fewer independents). Given Romney’s native-state status, his spending advantage, and his very blunt promises to bail out MI’s economy with federal money, his win, while a “shocker” in terms of shaking up the race, wasn’t really very surprising.
The problem for Romney is that his MI formula is not replicable elsewhere. And the problem for the GOP is that this continues to look like a nomination contest no one can win–and everyone can lose.
This doesn’t mean the Republican nomination will be decided at the Convention; delegates will be awarded in big batches on February 5, and it’s entirely possible that the field will effectively be down to two or three candidates by then. But the palpable lack of excitement in the GOP over its options is more striking than ever.

In the tight Democratic presidential nominating contest, the first-ever Nevada Caucuses, which were pretty much ignored by political observers in the long run-up to IA and NH, have suddenly been invested with great significance. An Obama win there, we are told, will interrupt the Clinton “comeback,” virtually guarantee Obama a SC win, and make the whole race dead even going into the Feb. 5 mega-event. A Clinton win, by contrast, continues her “big mo.” And one poll showing a virtual three-way tie in Nevada has given new hope to the Edwards campaign that it can survive and then even thrive outside the Clinton-Obama crossfire.
The problem is: nobody really has a clear idea about participation in the Caucuses, since there’s no history to cite.
For a good impressionistic account of the confused situation on the ground in Nevada, I recommend a MyDD diary by desmoulins, an Edwards organizer from Las Vegas.

Less than 100 hours now to the NV caucus and turnout is still a massive question mark, that will determine the outcome. All year, I’ve felt this will be a low-turnout affair driven by activists combined by whatever campaign had the resources and organization to drag in casual, non-activist supporters. All year, I’d hoped that would be Edwards, with a combination of long-term organization, a strong message, momentum from Iowa, and the support of SEIU and Culinary. All year, I’d presumed that if Obama got those breaks instead, as he did in the end, he’d surge past and win handsomely. And all year, I’ve presumed that the Clinton support was very soft and would melt away when we entered the final 2 weeks, and people started to focus intensely on the race.
I still have no idea if any of that will prove to be prescient or, as is usually the case, I’m way, way off base. In short, its exciting as all get-out to be in a race that nobody has any clue how its going to go Saturday.

The diary also has a deep-in-the-weeds account of the last-minute teachers’ union lawsuit aimed at invalidating the at-large Caucus sites being set up on the Las Vegas Strip to make it easier for casino workers to participate (thought to be a large boon to Obama).
If you recall the accounts (here and elsewhere) of the confusion surrounding Caucus Night in Iowa, a place where Caucus procedures are a venerable science, you can imagine the chaos likely to ensue in Nevada on Saturday.

As the Democratic presidential contest gets ever-more-intense, and delegate counts gradually become as important as poll numbers, a lot of attention is now being paid to “superdelegates,” the 796 DNC members and elected officials who get an automatic ex officio ticket to Denver. They matter in part because they collectively represent nearly 20% of the entire convention; and in part because they will go to Denver officially unpledged–i.e., they cannot legally be bound by primary or caucus results, and they can in fact change their endorsements at will.
The best place to track superdelegates and their preferences is a site called 2008 Democratic Convention Watch, which not only keeps up with the numbers but also posts varying counts by other sources. By their own count, 282 superdelegates have endorsed, with Clinton holding 175, Obama 73, Edwards 27, and Kucinich 2 (these numbers include superdelegates from MI and FL, which may be excluded from the convention). Obama has been narrowing the gap in recent days, unsurprisingly. That leaves another 514 superdelegates up for grabs, and again, they can shift allegiances at will.
A quick look at the endorsement lists shows some unsurprising patterns: the three main candidates pick up big chunks of superdelegates from their home states, while HRC is benefitting disproportionately from DNC member support. But beyond that, the lists are pretty polyglot, and certainly don’t fit any of the left-center ideological boxes that some observers have tried to build for the candidates; Blue Dogs and Progressive Caucus members are all over the lot.
Superdelegates are unlikely to decide the nomination; plenty of the currently unaligned folks will feel some pressure to follow their state’s primary/caucus results, and a concerted superdelegate effort to counteract clear majority support for a candidate from elected delegates would almost certainly backfire. But they do represent a modest firewall against the nightmare contingency of a late development that makes a putative nominee a general election disaster. And in the very unlikely case of a highly competitive contest that’s not resolved by the primaries, then they could become a big prize indeed, even now in an era where convention conference rooms will be officially smoke-free.

Three big national outlets have released new national polls during the last few days–CNN/Gallup, ABC/Washington Post, and CBS/New York Times. All three have Clinton maintaining a national lead over Obama, though one–ABC/Post–has Obama closing to within five percent. All three have McCain running first and Huckabee second among Republicans; one (CBS/NYT) is distincting in showing Romney plunging into single digits.
Some of the variations are simply of degree. For example, the ABC and CBS polls both over-sample African-American Democrats, and both show Obama now leading HRC there, but the former shows a much larger Obama lead. And all three show McCain making gains among moderate Republicans and independents, but differ somewhat in the other candidates’ standing with these groups.
But the finding that struck me most was in the ABC/Post poll, where the usual questions about the attitude of voters to the idea of the first female, African-American, or Mormon president was supplemented with a question about John McCain’s age.
Looking at the “effect on enthusiasm” of such candidate attributes among voters in both parties, the poll found these “net effects:”
Obama as first black president Dems: +22 GOP: -2
Clinton as first woman Dems: +32 GOP: -20
Huckabee as first Baptist minister Dems: -17 GOP: +5
Romney as first Mormon Dems: -25 GOP: -23
McCain as first at age 72 Dems: -35 GOP: -22
In other words, the “first” characteristics have a positive overall net effect for both Democrats, and negative overall net effect for all three Republicans. But the biggest negative impact of all is the knowledge that McCain would be the oldest candidate ever elected president (Reagan would become the second oldest, at 69).
If nothing else, this kind of polling may soon make McCain’s age and health the issue a lot of observers have expected it to become for a long time. And if he has the bad luck to have one of those moments like Bob Dole’s fall off a platform in 1996, it could be a real problem for him.